Wow, a day after the iPhone Dev Team released their updated Redsn0w software, Apple releases an update to iPhone OS. This isn’t a significant update to the iPhone OS. It doesn’t introduce new and exciting features to the current hardware but it does fix a number of issues and bugs.

This update fixes and improves the following:

• Improves accuracy of reported battery level on iPhone 3GS
• Resolves issue where third-party apps would not launch in some instances
• Fixes bug that may cause an app to crash when using the Japanese Kana keyboard

This update is for all current hardware, iPhone 1G (EDGE), iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and all iPod Touch devices. You can easily get the update via iTunes by connecting your device and clicking “Check for Update”

*Note* It’s been confirmed by the iPhone Dev Team that Redsn0w 0.9.2 works with this new iPhone OS update only with iPhone 1G (EDGE) and iPhone 3G and *ONLY* if you don’t care about unlocking. Just point Redsn0w 0.9.2 to the iPhone OS 3.1.2 firmware IPSW — The iPhone Dev Team urges iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch users who wish to jailbreak to stay away from this update until further notice!

Downloads:
iPhone OS 3.1.3 Downloads will be up shortly!
iPhone 2G EDGE 3.1.3 IPSW Download
iPhone 3G 3.1.3 IPSW Download
iPhone 3GS 3.1.3 IPSW Download

The good ol’ folks from the iPhone Dev Team have updated redsn0w after a long time without any updates.

A cross-platform jailbreaking, unlocking, and customizing tool for iPhones and iPod touches. Customizations include boot logos, recovery logos, and “verbose” boot. It’s a standalone program that doesn’t use iTunes (no custom IPSWs are involved).

iPhone Dev Team’s Redsn0w finally supports iPhone OS 3.1.2 but it’s still tether-only for late models such as the iPod Touch 2G if the serial number starts with “MC”, any iPod Touch 3G and iPhone 3GS.

The new version of Redsn0w also adds new features such as, Verbose boot, addition of custom Boot Logos, and bypassing jailbreak if your device is already jailbroken.

Download:
Redsn0w downloads will be up shortly!
Redsn0w v0.9.2 Download for Mac OS X
Redsn0w v0.9.2 Download for Windows PC

- source: wikee.iphwn.org

Boy Genius Report claims to have received information from a source regarding iPhone OS 4.0, which is rumored to be introduced at next week’s media event in San Francisco. According to the source, iPhone OS 4.0 will be limited to the iPhone 3G and 3GS (presumably including at least more recent iPod touch models and omitting the original iPhone) and will incorporate solutions for multitasking by running applications in the background and a revamped user interface for easier navigation.

• There will be multi-touch gestures OS-wide. (Would make sense for that as the rumored OS for the iTablet is close if not the same as the iPhone)
• “A few new ways” to run applications in the background — multitasking.
• Many graphical and UI changes to make navigating through the OS easier and more efficient. We haven’t had this broken down, but we can only hope for improved notifications, a refreshed homescreen, etc.
• The update will supposedly be available for only the iPhone 3G and 3GS, but will “put them ahead in the smartphone market because it will make them more like full-fledged computers” more than any other phone to date. Everyone is “really excited.”
• The last piece of information is the most vague, but apparently there will be some brand new syncing ability for the contacts and calendar applications.

The ability to run iPhone applications in the background has been near the top of many users’ wish lists, but Apple has yet to implement full backgrounding and multitasking due to its effect on performance and battery life, instead opting to deploy push notifications as a means for closed applications to serve data to users.

- source: boygeniusreport.com

Today, Apple announced that users have now downloaded over three billion iPhone and iPod touch applications from AppStore since its July 2008 launch.

“Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months — this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The revolutionary App Store offers iPhone and iPod touch users an experience unlike anything else available on other mobile devices, and we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”

The AppStore reached 2 billion downloads just over 3 months ago. The new milestone represents continued acceleration of growth for the store as Apple’s handheld devices continue to attract significant numbers of customers. The App Store continues to be available to customers in 77 countries, offering applications in 20 categories.

- source: apple.com

Toshiba announced that they have launched a 64GB embedded NAND flash memory module. The new chip offers 64GB on a single chip and will start mass production in the first quarter of 2010.

The reason the largest iPhone (32GB) currently has 1/2 the memory of the largest iPod touch (64GB) is that the iPhone can only house a single NAND flash chip while the iPod touch can accommodate two. The additional space in the iPhone is taken up by its communication hardware. This new advancement should allow for 64GB iPhones and 128GB iPod touches in 2010.

Last year, Toshiba first announced their 32GB NAND flash modules which apparently ended up being used in the latest iPhone revision. iSuppli’s teardown identified Toshiba as the supplier of the iPhone 3GS’s flash memory.

- source: toshiba.co.jp

A Swiss iPhone developer has published research that indicates that security vulnerabilities affecting the iPhone are not limited to jailbroken iPhones. Developer Nicholas Seriot has created a proof of concept app called SpyPhone as a demonstration of how Apple’s own APIs could be misused to read or edit a user’s address book or gain access to a user’s web surfing history or recent location information.

For such attacks to succeed, a malicious application would still need to get past Apple’s stringent App Store approval process to be available for non-jailbroken iPhones, however this is not outside of the realm of possibility as such an app would not require the use of any exploits or third-party APIs, and the spyware portion could be hidden by delayed activation or an encrypted payload.

Seriot detailed these potential iPhone privacy risks in a talk he delivered in Geneva on Wednesday, during which he also outlined possible defense strategies, suggesting that Apple should design the iPhone OS to require users to authorize read or read-write access by iPhone applications to potentially sensitive on-device information such as the Address Book, add firewall functionality to the device and ensure the keyboard cache is not as readily available to third-party applications.

- source: theregister.co.uk

While listening to the latest SecurityNow! podcast from the TWiT Network, Steve Gibson the host of the podcast and security expert mentioned there was not only one but two new iPhone worms that aren’t just changing wallpapers like the ikee iphone worm reported a few days ago. This time, the worms are stealing personal information such as your contacts, photos, text messages, email and even music. Currently, there’s only two known worms but more are definitely expected.

The worms aren’t named in the podcast, but these are serious worms. This affects jailbroken iPhones running OpenSSH and the only way to prevent from getting attacked is by changing the root iPhone ssh password or to uninstall OpenSSH

Transcript from the podcast. Credit: grc.com

STEVE: Also in news following from last week, and you probably already have heard of this, Leo, the jailbroken iPhone problem that we discussed has, not surprisingly, escalated. We’re no longer changing wallpaper to some random singer from the past. We’re now stealing phone data, including contacts, music, photos, email, text messages, and pretty much everything. There are two known and more expected current worms that are sucking personal content off of iPhones that have been jailbroken where their SSH server password has not been changed.

Remember from last week we discussed this, that the problem is that jailbreaking installs an SSH server, and it has a default password that everyone knows. If you jailbreak your phone and don’t change that password, then your phone literally can be contacted over the Internet, just like you were running a little web server. In this case it’s an SSH server. Someone can log onto your phone and do pretty much what they want. The original problem, which was a worm constrained to Australia, was just changing wallpaper. Not surprisingly, that quickly escalated into much more damaging attacks. So if you do have a jailbroken phone, do make sure you change that SSH password because it’s getting bad quickly.

If you need to know how to change your iPhone SSH password click here

If you want to listen to the episode of SecurityNow!, where these worms are mentioned click here and listen or download the MP3

- source: twit.tv

GeoHot has released his latest tool to jailbreak iPhone OS 3.1.2 on the Mac platform, so for all those Mac users wanting a 30s or less jailbreak can now do so. Along with Blackra1n for Mac OS X, Blackra1n was updated for the Windows platform to fix various bugs on the Windows application.

So, what is blackra1n? blackra1n is a 30 second ALL device 3.1.2 jailbreak. Even the ipt3, but the ipt3 is tethered. In order to boot it, just rerun blackra1n.

Warning 3g and 3gs unlockers, do not upgrade to 3.1.2 using iTunes if you want to keep your unlock. Check out the dev team’s offerings. Also blackra1n doesn’t hacktivate.

Updates to blackra1n:

• Unlock
• Hacktivation
• Keep legit activation if activated before running app
• 15 seconds faster
• Tiger + PPC support

Download:
GeoHot’s blackra1n for Mac Download

GeoHot’s blackra1n RC3 for Windows Download

- source: blackra1n.com

Apple has released an update to iTunes 9, which adds a dark theme to the Grid view, support for AppleTV firmware version 3.0, and improves support for accessibility.

iTunes 9.0.2 adds support for Apple TV software version 3.0, adds an option for a dark background for Grid View, and improves support for accessibility.

You can grab the update via Software Update or at Apple’s iTunes download page at the source link below

- source: apple.com

Anyone eagerly awaiting for a jailbreak for the iPod Touch 3G (Third Generation) will be absolutely pleased to know that GeoHot has successfully jailbroken the iTouch 3G and will have an application coming out soon that will do just that – blackra1n – However, I am not completely sure if this is strictly for the iPod Touch or if it’ll work for all devices. Guess we’ll find out when it’s released!

10 seconds. and may work for every version of software *ever*, based on the prettiness of the exploit

The release for his jailbreak tool should be released within the next day or so. Stay tuned!

- source: blackra1n.com