Comex Wins a Pwnie Award for his JailbreakMe Exploit, GeoHot Wins Best Song

For those who aren’t familiar with the event, the Pwnie Awards is an annual awards show celebrating failures and achievements in the security community. This year’s ceremony took place in Las Vegas, Nevada at the BlackHat security conference.

All together there were 9 awards handed out, and it probably won’t surprise you that a certain iDevice hacker took home one of them. As a matter of fact, 2 well known members of the jailbreak community ended up taking home Pwnies…
It’s not hard to believe that the 19-year old Comex took the award for the Best Client-Side Bug with his JailbreakMe PDF exploit. After all, the tool is attributed with jailbreaking over a million iDevices, and exposing an extremely dangerous security flaw in iOS.

“Comex exploited a vulnerability in the interpreter for Type 1 font programs in the FreeType library used by Mobile Safari. This exploit is a great example of programming a weird machine to exploit a modern system. Comex used his control over the interpreter to construct a highly sophisticated ROP payload at runtime and bypass the ASLR protection in iOS.”

There was also a Best Song category, and believe it or not,  GeoHot took home the gold. His Light it Up Contest video, which the hacker made in response to his legal battles with Sony, won the Pwnie for the best hacker-written ballad. In other news, Sony took home the Most Epic FAIL award.

As easy as it is these days for us to jailbreak our devices, it’s easy to forget how hard others work to make it possible. It’s very nice to see Comex rewarded for his efforts. And GeoHot? Well, I suppose he deserved his Pwnie too. His rap was pretty entertaining.

What do you think?

New Twitter.com for iPad Design Rolling Out this Week

Folks who prefer browsing Twitter.com with the iPad instead of using a native Twitter client will be happy to hear that the social networking giant is updating the site to be more compatible with Apple’s tablet.

Up until now, navigating Twitter’s website from the iPad was unpleasant. You had the choice to view the site in desktop mode, or an upscaled mobile view — neither one is very tablet-friendly. But that’s all going to change during the next 7 days…
According to the company’s twittermobile account, a new HTML5 version of Twitter.com for the iPad went live yesterday. The new design will be rolling out to iPad users over the next week, so you may not see the change right away.

“The HTML5 app provides a great option for people who prefer to use the browser over native apps. it’s two-color view is consistent with the Twitter experience you’re used to (on Twitter.com), and it takes advantage of touch gestures and other device capabilities.”

It seems there has been a big push recently to make sites more compatible with tablet browsers. Google just updated their site with a new interface for the iPad, and Facebook is expected to launch their big HTML5-based Project Spartan in the near future.

Have you received the Twitter.com update for the iPad? Do you like it?

iPhone 5 to Ship in September?

A new rumor claims that Petragon will begin shipping an order of 10 million iPhone 5 units in September. This order would place Petragon as Apple’s second design manufacturer, and would match recent rumors of iPhone 5 production beginning overseas.

This report is similar to other claims that Apple will begin shipping its next iPhone in September. The most recent rumor counters a September timeframe for Apple’s announcement with an expected October release. However, a September date still seems to make more sense for an expected iPhone 5 announcement.
“Pegatron Technology has landed orders for 10 million units of iPhone 5 to become the second ODM of the smartphone. Shipments will start in September, according to industry sources.”

A recent report turned the rumor mill on its head with an October date for Apple’s next iPhone. The odds of an October release still seem slim, as the evidence continues to point towards a September timeframe.

iPhone 3GS supplies have begun to tighten alongside retail iPhone 4 discounts. The iPhone 5 refresh is expected to be “bigger than expected,” and it is even speculated that disguised units have been sent to carriers for testing.

Whether Apple announces the next iPhone in September or October, production for the device will have begin very soon.

No Untethered Jailbreak Coming Until iOS 5

If you are currently jailbroken on iOS 4.3.5, we have some bad news. There is going to be no untethered jailbreak until iOS 5 is released. This is because the various jailbreak teams are saving their exploits for iOS 5. They could release an untethered jailbreak right now, but then it would take longer to find an exploit for iOS 5…
It would be a smart move for jailbreak devs to wait because Apple doesn’t know what to patch, and, if released now, an untethered exploit would not work on iOS 5. Along with that, a tethered Apple A5 jailbreak is also being worked on. This is a bootrom exploit, meaning that this can’t be patched. This is also being saved so that when the iPhone 5 releases, it can be jailbroken quickly.

Are you excited for an iPhone 5/iPad 2 bootrom exploit? Remember, iOS 5 is set to debut in the September timeframe. The iPhone 5 is expected to come out during September, too.