A tethered jailbreak has been available for iOS 5 since shortly after the first beta of the operating system was released. All these months later, iPhone users looking to free their smartphones from Apple’s control are still stuck with a tethered solution. While an untethered jailbreak has remained elusive, recently there’s been some progress towards a work-around of sorts, thanks to a semi-tethered jailbreak that retains basic phone functionality post-reset, until the jailbreak can be re-activated via computer. We’re now one step closer to seeing a proper untethered jailbreak, thanks to the announcement earlier today of the discovery of a new iOS 5 exploit.

It wasn’t long after the first beta release of iOS 5 that the key exploit used in existing untethered jailbreaks had been discovered fixed, rendering its further use impossible. Since then, we’ve been awaiting the discovery of a replacement bug in order to restore the untethered functionality. This morning Chronic Dev Team member pod2g tweeted that he had discovered just such a hole in iOS 5.

Obviously, the nature of the exploit has not been revealed, lest Apple quickly patch this one, too. We also don’t know just how long it might take to make its way into a jailbreak tool, but pod2g writes that we shouldn’t expect it anytime soon. That may be unfortunate, but patience has gotten us this far, so we’ll just have to keep on waiting; at least now the release of an untethered jailbreak feels very much like an inevitability.

Source: @pod2g

Via: Cydia Help