iOS 6 Untethered Jailbreak: Planetbeing Successfully Jailbreaks iPhone 5 on iOS 6.0.2
iOS 6 Untethered Jailbreak: Planetbeing Successfully Jailbreaks iPhone 5 on iOS 6.0.2

There is finally some good news for jailbreak users, who have been eagerly awaiting the release of untethered jailbreak for iOS 6. Despite the recent topsy-turvy events (pod2g's unexpected exit and return to jailbreak development, as well as a flurry of fake iOS 6 untethered jailbreak claims swarming the internet) taking place in the jailbreak scene, the Dream Team of hackers have finally achieved what seemed an improbable feat until now.

As iPhone Hacks notes, renowned iPhone Dev Team member - planetbeing - has revealed his jailbroken iPhone 5 running iOS 6.0.2 untethered, on Reddit. In response to a recent discussion thread about pod2g returning back to jailbreak scene, planetbeing said, "Yeah, I'm not really sure what all the doom and gloom is about. The fact is, I have an untethered iOS 6.0.2 JB running on my iPhone5 right now. The reasons it's not released are because 1. releasing it would burn an exploit we want to save for ourselves so we can always get in to look at new firmware and help JB in the future, 2. iOS 6.1 is coming very soon and will likely break a small part of it anyway, there's no point in sacrificing the many bugs it won't break. "

The veteran hacker justified his decision of not releasing the iOS 6 untethered jailbreak, he added, "Anyway, where there are 4+ bugs (that it took to get this to work), there's gotta be one or two more so while jailbreaking is getting harder, reports of its death are highly exaggerated. This is not stuff I want to say over Twitter with 140 characters because I'm afraid of starting some sort of riot, but I like the smaller /r/jailbreak community more."

Clarifying doubts of the sceptics, planetbeing assures that he finally has access to a fully working jailbreak. He further claims that the jailbreak enables its user to run MobileSubstrate that is necessary for installing jailbreak tweaks.

Following planetbeing's revelation about jailbreaking his own iPhone 5 untethered on iOS 6.0.2, a swarm of Reddit users appreciated his work:

"Its just nice to hear from on of the devs, its been realy gloomy lately, and Ive had to get used to an iPhone without JB....and it sucks. THANKS AND KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!!" commented one user.

"Not a day goes by when I don't make use of a Cydia package. I don't know how I functioned before SpringFlash. I won't buy an iOS device unless there is an untethered jailbreak. Thank you for everything," replied another user.

One such Reddit user even offered to help the jailbreak team in their quest to unearth new exploits for iOS 6 untethered jailbreak:

"Hey I am starting to security research ios and if I find an exploit or bug how do I give it to you or someone else in the community? I probably won't, but who knows."

Another Reddit user clarified his doubt: "Just wondering, how often does apple fix bugs that you guys find but save in favor of a future jailbreak or for yourselves?"

Planetbeing responded to the user: "Sometimes they do. It depends on the type of bug. It's a risk. That's of course a drawback with sitting on things like this, but I was not the discoverer of all of the bugs I used so not releasing is a collective call."

Commenting on the return of pod2g to the jailbreaking scene, the veteran hacker explained: "He (pod2g) didn't (say he has returned to jailbreak development), but hey, at least he told me last night he looked into a couple of bugs (without much success) recently, after basically not being around since WWJC, so that's cool. I doubt he wants to promise he'll be around working on this full time however.

"I haven't worked on any jailbreak stuff for a couple of months as well, not until basically I was flying back from 29C3 in Germany and realized/remembered I actually know about enough bugs to put together an entire untethered jailbreak (still unreleasable due to reasons I stated in my other comment here)."

Meanwhile, Jay Freeman (aka Saurik), the founder of Cydia, has confirmed pod2g's return in his recent statement on Reddit: "I actually was working with pod2g (albeit with a worse headache than I've had in at least a year, so mostly as a "gdb test monkey"), and can thereby personally attest that he didn't just say it, he actually did it ;P."

As planetbeing pointed out earlier, Apple is busy working on the public release of iOS 6.1, which is expected to arrive in the next few days. Four iterations of iOS 6.1 Beta have already been released for developer testing, and considering planetbeing's revelation, the untethered jailbreak for iOS 6.1 seems definitely around the corner.