iOS 5 Untethered Jailbreak: Apple Patches Corona Untethered in iOS 5.1 Beta 3; Update to iOS 5.0.1 at the Earliest

UPDATE: iOS 5 Untethered Jailbreak: Corona A5 Jailbreak for iPhone 4S, iPad 2 'Ready to Pop'

It all began when the infamous iOS hacker, Pod2g, announced that he had found a bug in the iOS 5 firmware which, he believed, could led to an untethered jailbreak for the latest Apple mobile operating system.

The hacker later successfully achieved an untethered jailbreak on iPod touch 3G running iOS 5, and went on to extend the exploit to A5-powered devices on iOS 5.0.1.

Among various updates, came another announcement from Pod2g that he had faced caching issues, causing the iPhone 4S jailbreak to fail. However, the caching issues were eliminated soon with the jailbreak community being treated by a demonstration video that showed iPhone 4 running an untethered jailbreak on iOS 5.0.1.

Pod2g then handed over all the information and tools related to his research to the Chronic Dev Team and the iPhone Dev Team. With the help of Pod2g's exploits, both the jailbreaker teams released Corona 5.0.1 and Redsn0w 9.10b1 respectively, compatible with A4-powered devices on iOS 5 or iOS 5.0.1 like iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad, iPod Touch 4G and iPod Touch 3G.

Various updates followed, giving insights into the difficulties that jailbreakers had to face in the process of finding an untethered jailbreak for A5 devices. However, owners of iPhone 4S and iPad 2 were still waiting patiently as frequent updates from jailbreakers related to their progress kept the hope alive for them.

The recent formation of the Dream Team of jailbreakers and the success in breaking the sandbox issue added to the excitement.

Everything went smoothly until Apple recently seeded the latest iOS 5.1 Beta 3 to registered developers for testing. On Friday, iOS developers on Twitter like @unimp0rtanttech, @abart997 and @nadeem97 posted that iOS 5.1 beta 3 closes the exploit for the Corona untethered jailbreak.

latest iOS 5.1 beta already patched the bugs corona uses, @unimp0rtanttech tweeted.

So yeah, iOS 5.1 Beta 3 is NOT vulnerable to Corona. Update to 5.0.1 before it's too late, @Nadeem97 posted.

Update to iOS 5.0.1 as Soon as Possible

Users are advised to update their devices to iOS 5.0.1, before Apple stop signing it. The only untethered jailbreak, currently available to the iPhone 4 and all other A4 devices, works on iOS 5.0.1 only.

Whenever a new firmware is released, Apple's signature server stops signing older firmware, which means that restoring to that firmware won't be verified by Apple. In such a situation, users will have only two options - remain with the current firmware or upgrade to iOS 5.1, which will not be jailbreakable using the currently available tools.

To know how to update your device to iOS 5.0.1 and save SHSH blobs (Signature HaSH blobs), click here.