Savvy iPhone 4S and iPad 2 owners were elated last week when the new dream team of iOS hacking announced that a jailbreak tool was finally available for owners of A5-powered devices. But there was a catch: the initial release of the new jailbreak tool, dubbed Absinthe, was only available for Mac computers. Owners of Windows machines will be happy to learn that the new jailbreaker resulting from the combined efforts of the iPhone Dev Team, the Chronic Dev Team and pod2g is now available for Windows. Absinthe 0...

Research In Motion, for the first time ever, suffered an exploit in which root access was gained on one of their devices, the PlayBook. While RIM initially downplayed the significance of the jailbreak, the exploit tool created by a few hackers was recently released to the public and it indeed gave users root access to the BlackBerry PlayBook, bypassing RIM’s security measures. After the jailbreak was released, RIM made an OTA update available that fixed the jailbreak. RIM’s fix has already been j...

Apple released iOS 4.3.4 on Friday in an effort to fix a security vulnerability that was present on both the iPhone and the iPad. The fix was supposed to prevent hackers from using a PDF security hole to jailbreak both devices. That didn’t quite work. The next day iPhone Dev Team was able to route around the security fix and issued a jailbreak tool for iOS 4.3.4. iPhone Dev Team has released the latest redsn0w jailbreak tool, but unfortunately it forces iOS 4.3.4 users to keep their iPhone or iPad tethe...

Web-based jailbreak tool Jailbreakme.com is back, and jailbreaking your iPhone, iPad or iPad touch has never been easier. How easy is it, you ask? Simply navigate to jailbreakme.com in Safari on your iOS device and then follow the on-screen instructions. Within seconds, you’ll be on your way to sporting an open iDevice. What’s more, JailbreakMe 3.0 is the first widely available tool to feature support for the iPad 2 (running iOS 4.3.3), so tablet owners will undoubtedly be excited about that. The ...

Everyone’s favorite muscle-bound nerd brought iOS fans great news on Tuesday: iOS 5 has already been jailbroken. The Dev Team’s “MuscleNerd” posted on Twitter that he has successfully jailbroken Apple’s iOS 5 software using Limera1n. Right now his jailbreak is tethered, meaning the device must be connected to a computer each time it is booted, but this version of the jailbreak will never reach consumers so it doesn’t really matter. MuscleNerd says the exploit used to jailb...

Jailbroken iOS users will soon have a new option for browsing and installing unsanctioned apps on their devices. A group of iPhone developers known as the Infini Dev Team is currently preparing to release a Web-based alternative to the popular Cydia app store, which will allow users to browse and install applications from within the Safari browser. Dubbed “lima,” the new app store will compete directly with Cydia — and with Apple’s App Store, of course — and it will provide both free and...

Toyota recently launched a publicized campaign that placed a special Scion-branded theme pack in the Cydia store for jailbroken iPhone users to enjoy. The move was seen as progressive considering Toyota’s decision to embrace the jailbreak community, but a new report reveals that the theme pack has since been pulled from Cydia. According to the report, Toyota’s advertising agency claims Toyota was contacted by Apple and asked to have the theme removed from Cydia. Toyota complied, of course, and ha...

Apple released the latest version of its mobile operating system last Friday and within 24 hours, a tethered jailbreak method became available to the public. This should hardly be unexpected, as the Dev Team had said it would wait for iOS 4.3.1 before releasing a jailbreak solution for iOS 4.3 in order to avoid having Apple fix the latest security hole the Dev Team planned to exploit. A “tethered” jailbreak affords users the same ability to customize iOS as the standard jailbreak, but it requires ...

AT&T has started to issue warnings to customers unofficially tethering their smartphones to its network. In an email to unauthorized tetherers, the company writes, “Our records show that you use this capability, but are not subscribed to our tethering plan.” The correspondence goes on to note that users will be automatically enrolled in the $45 per month “DataPro for Smartphone Tethering” plan if they ignore the warning. “The new plan – whether you sign up on your own or we...

It’s rather sad that Bluetooth file transferring coming to a modern smartphone by way of a third party application is something that warrants coverage, but that’s what you get when the smartphone you’re talking about is the iPhone. Its lack of ability to conduct Bluetooth file transfers is just one of the many things we wish were not left off of the original iPhone and when we saw that it wasn’t coming to firmware 2.0+ we were quite surprised. Thankfully it looks like Bluetooth file tr...

Yeah, we know that the iPhone’s software keyboard is a thing of beauty, and that the aesthetic argument for a clean, unblemished touchreen interface is a good one. That said, there are days when you just need a little physical keyboard goodness to make it through the 300th email response you have to bang out. A clever iPhone hacker seems to agree, having hacked his jailbroken iPhone to support a physical keyboard. Sure, the interface is a bit… clunky, and the actual connection between the keyboard...