Following its release on Mac OS X late last week, the Absinthe untethered jailbreak tool for owners of A5-powered devices is now available on Windows as well. Users with an iPhone 4S running iOS 5.0 or iOS 5.0.1 or an iPad 2 running iOS 5.0.1 can download the Windows build directly from the Greenpois0n website.
As many of you know very well, jailbreaking allows unsanctioned application to be installed on Apple's smartphone and tablet, and facilitates a number of user interface and system-level tweaks. But getting around the A5 chip's security features proved very difficult, according to the legion of renowned hackers involved.
"The endless war we fight to jailbreak has become more and more difficult with each new device released, and our recent battle against A5 only proved this further," said Joshua Hill, aka p0sixninja, a member of the Chronic Dev Team. He collaborated with researchers from the iPhone Dev Team, such as 'MuscleNerd' and 'Saurik', as well as other independent iOS researchers to come up with a "ridiculously complex combination of exploits-within-exploits" that ultimately enabled them to come with the Absinthe jailbreak tool.
Details about iOS exploits used by the Absinthe A5 software will be released at an as-yet unspecified conference later this year, according to a blog post at the group's website.
To jailbreak your device simply make sure it is running a supported version of iOS (5.0 or 5.0.1 for the iPhone 4S and 5.0.1 for the iPad), then download Absinthe and load it up using the one-click GUI. It's worth noting that although Jailbreaking is legal, the practice is frowned upon Apple and will void your warranty. Absinthe has only been around for a few days so it's also possible you might also run into a bug.