Recently the tech freedom activists behind Electronic Frontier Foundation asked for help in the fight for keeping jailbreaking a legal act. People from EFF wanted their supporters to leave comments on the website of US Copyright office in support of jailbreaking. The comments section on their website was shut down ten days ago, and following this, Copyright office shared the posted comments online. There were only 700 recorded posts made, but some real big names in the iOS jailbreak world were adding their weight to this fight. One of those important figures from the jailbreak community was the famous Saurik, owner and maintainer of Cydia, the unofficial app store for iOS. Jay Freeman, which is the real name of Saurik, added more than 5 pages of his thoughts and facts on why the jailbreaking is legal and why it needs to stay legal in the future.

Among other reasons he wrote that many developers were not satisfied with the imposed artificial limitations, thus they have taken on the task of escaping from the jail (aka jailbreaking)! The tools they developed for this process have later become known as jailbreak tools like RedSn0w, Sn0wBreeze, PwnageTools etc. The main function of these tools was to install third party apps and tweaks on jailbroken devices. The jailbreaks were based on different processes, depending on the approach used by developers. Some of these were rooting, bootloader based jailbreaks and a number of other processes. The jailbreak is generally speaking easy and safe if you know what you are doing, but the various approaches and ensuing results are somewhat different.
Some actions after the jailbreak were more or less difficult, so for example it isn’t as easy to upgrade the device firmware after the jailbreak without removing the jailbreak completely. Of course: you can upgrade the device but you need to use the so called custom firmware upgrade option. This involves a process where you use the jailbreak tool to create a custom firmware which is afterwards loaded onto the device.

Saurik’s whole comment is an interesting read, and you can check it out in its whole length on the US Copyright office website. Two years ago, US courts ruled out that jailbreaking is indeed legal, but the decision could expire this year. If for some unknown reason the Copyright office does not confirm the legality of jailbreaking, the decision could again become used against people deciding to jailbreak their own devices.

This is down to the new Apple A5 processor based architecture that is being used in the iPad 2 and it seems to be proving rather difficult to jailbreak. The Limera1n exploit which worked on A4 based iOS devices just doesn’t work on the new A5 based system that the iPad 2 is running.

iPhone dev Comex’s Jailbreak Me took which worked on an userland exploit doesn’t work either but there looks like there might be some development planned. iPhone dev Comex updated the website for Jailbreak Me and the updated page according to Comex is a tease. The page shows a photo of a signboard which says PDF. This could mean that a potential PDF based exploit could be on the cards but for which iOS devices and which iOS version is the question.

These teases are supposed to arouse hope and curiosity are we are all hoping that the new Jailbreak Me 3.0 will be an untethered jailbreak for the iPad 2 as well as all other iOS devices that are using iOS 5. Comex’s tweets don’t give us any hints either so it is all just a matter of waiting now. Let’s hope he is working on a jailbreak for the A5 processor and the iPad 2.

On another note, iOS 5 is to be released this autumn and there is going to be a lot to look forward to according to the official features that have been released. We wonder if Comex should save his new browser based jailbreak for the iOS 5? What do you think?

Anyone who has a MobileMe account should be aware of the fact that this will no longer be available from the 30th of June 2012. All those who have an account have had their service automatically extended until June 30th 2012 at no additional cost but after that it will no longer be available.

Apple’s iCloud will be available in the autumn and will be free for iOS 5 and OS X Lion users. When users sign up for iCloud they will be able to keep their me.com or mac.com email addresses and move their MobileMe mail, contacts, calendars and bookmarks to the new service.

iCloud includes all the features that were previously available in MobileMe along with some additions too. These additions include online apps such as the online contacts and mail apps which have been written from scratch taking into account everything that was learned from MobileMe.

iCloud also has heavily enhanced synching. With iCloud important files such as documents and pictures can now be synced across different devices. iWork is also available which will allow users to edit documents over this service and view the changes in real time.

iCloud will also allow data such as settings, books, pictures, video and even Apps to be backup up and shown across all your devices too. iTunes is also available and this service will allow any newly purchased content to be automatically synced over the air to up to 10 devices. For your already purchased content you will have the option to download each song, app or book individually.

iCloud will be made available this autumn and it is going to be completely free. There is a 5GB limit and purchased items and Photo Steam won’t add to this. Whether this service will success or not is yet to be seen but it sounds promising.

This widget works along the same lines as the WeeTwitter widget but this time using Facebook. This new widget s available for download for free right now and if you would like to see your Facebook updates in your iOS 5 notification center and you have a jailbroken iPhone then this is for you.

This new WeeFacebook widget is the latest in a line of widgets that are being put together by developers to take advantage of the new notification centre that comes with iOS 5. Apple have yet to confirm that widgets will be available in the App store but we are sure they are aware of the possibilities and we sure to jump on the bandwagon.

If the WeeFacebook widget sounds good to you then you will need to have a jailbroken version of Apple’s iOS 5 beta in order to take advantage of it. These widgets are not available through Cydia so you will have to manually install them.

Below you will find details on how to self install these widgets.

The first thing you need to do is install MobileTerminal which you will find in Cydia and then set up iPhone Explorer on your pc. Once done, plug your device into your computer.

Next from your pc download the file from https://github.com/mgebele/WeeFacebookDeb and then run iPhone Explorer and copy and paste the file you have downloaded.

Next launch MobileTerminal and switch to administrator mode by typing login and then root. Next you have to enter your password which should be alpine unless you have changed it. Next enter the text below.
# /usr/bin/dpkg -i /var/mobile/com.manuelgebele.weefacebook_1.0.1-1_iphoneos-arm.deb

Once you restart your iPhone it will be complete. Remember if you want to use this widget you need to be running iOS 5 and a jailbreak.

The Dev Team has been using incomplete code-signing attacks to find and perform untethered jailbreaks on iOS devices that were running iOS 4.1 and up but this exploit has been patched with the latest release iOS 4.3.4. This was done in reaction to Comex’s JailbreakMe 3.0 tool that used a PDF exploit in iOS 4.3.3 to jailbreak all iOS devices including the iPad 2.
I0n1c who is actually Stefan Esser an independent iOS hacker has been talking about this on Twitter. He stated that incomplete code signing attacks were used for all untether exploits from at least iOS 4.1.0. In addition to this iOS 4.3.4 also adds code to dyld to detect attacks with binaries using incomplete code signing. He went on to say that iOS 4.3.4 does not only fix JailbreakMe 3.0 as announced but also silently kills the ndrv_setspec () integer overflow.

What this all means to the average person is that iOS 4.3.4 won’t be receiving an untethered jailbreak anytime soon. A significant consequence of course is that all future iOS devices that are sold by Apple Stores will come with iOS 4.3.4 which they won’t be able to jailbreak. What this will mean is that if you buy one of these you will have to live without Cydia until an untethered jailbreak solution is found.
If you have a jailbroken idevice you are advised to stay away from iOS 4.3.4. There is a tethered jailbreak solution available via Redsn0w and Pwnage Tool but with this you have to connect your iOS device to your PC every time you restart it.