iPhone 5 Untethered Jailbreak Is Just One Step Away, But There’s A Catch

One thing’s clear: the iPhone 5 isn’t going to be a cakewalk to jailbreak. It’s based upon an all-new chip and an all-new operating system, and so far, the Dev Team has been stumped as to how to get a jailbreak out to the masses. But now Planetbeing, a member of the Chronic Dev Team, has given iPhone 5 owners a ray of hope: he says he’s almost figured out a full tethered jailbreak for the iPhone 5, and from there, an untethered jailbreak is on the horizon. But there’s a big catch: it can only be run from a developer account.

Planetbeing took to his Twitter account this morning to talk about his exploit:

Upgraded the #failbreak with a kernel exploit so tweaks actually work on iPhone 5. :D Almost a full tethered JB, though need dev account.
— planetbeing (@planetbeing) October 18, 2012

@planetbeing not to bother you, but if its a successful tether would you release it as that or continue to work for an untether?
— payturr (@payturr) October 19, 2012

@payturr It’s likely we would try working on an untether for awhile. No sense burning 3 vulns for tethered when 4 will get you untethered.
— planetbeing (@planetbeing) October 19, 2012

That would seemingly bode well, but sadly, the magic words here are “need dev account.” There are often unusable jailbreak techniques floating around that are for Apple Developers only, but these jailbreaks can not be rolled out to the masses at large. In a best case scenario, this dev-only untethered jailbreak will open the door for untethered jailbreaks for everyone, and allow Cydia developers to update their tweaks accordingly.
Sadly, then, this means more waiting for iPhone 5 owners who want to jailbreak their devices. We may all be waiting a lot while longer still.

from Cult of Mac by John Brownlee