Mobile Safari Exploit Allows Untethered Jailbreak for iPhone OS 3.1.3

A few days ago, the TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) held its annual Pwn2Own contest at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, BC. Along with many vulnerabilities and hacks discovered in Browsers and Operating Systems, Ralf Philipp Weinmann of the University of Luxembourg and Vincenzo Iozzo of German company Zynamics were able to grab key data in an iPhone, according to Portnoy. “The researchers used a vulnerability in Safari that pulled the SMS database,” he explained. Data included deleted messages, contacts, pictures, and iTunes music files. The joint hackers shared a $15,000 prize, and each took ownership of an iPhone.

With discovery of this recent vulnerability in the iPhone’s latest OS 3.1.3, it was inevitable for the jailbreak rumors to start emerging. According to statement made by the Musclenerd iPhone DEV team could be the one appointed by Iozzo and Weinmann code, including the browser-based jailbreak we used back in October 2007. According to Musclenerd this bug in iPhone Safari would allow a quick jailbreak the device simply by connecting to an external website created for this purpose.

Unlike conventional jailbreaking techniques which are software driven, user driven "userland" jailbreaks are a much easier process whereby users are required to merely point their Mobile Safari browser to a particular URL to jailbreak their device. This technique was possible in iPhone OS 1.x but have since then been rendered due to continuous security upgrades by Apple.

However, user driven "userland" jailbreaks could be made available once again. iPhone hacker Comex has released a demo video showcasing the impending arrival of such a jailbreak. In this recently released video, Comex demonstrates a fully untethered userland jailbreak of iPhone OS 3.1.3. While hoax videos as these are not exactly uncommon, the video has received positive reviews from popular jailbreakers 'MuscleNerd' and Joshua Hill from the iPhone Dev Team who claim that the video is in fact genuine. Check out the preview video below of what appears to be an untethered jailbroken iPod Touch 3rd Generation.

No further information is available about this breaking development, hence, no word on the release date.

We have already seen the demonstration of the untethered jailbreak by Geohot on iPhone 3GS, and yet another jailbreak announced by p0sixninja of the Chronic Dev-team demonstrating GreenP0ison which is rumred to even jailbreak iPad’s which is to release April 3rd.