The iPhone Dev Team has released the updated version of their Redsn0w tool which was teased a while back on Twitter by MuscleNerd. The update as you’d expect is a very significant one, and brings with it the support for downgrading the iPhone 4S, iPad 2 and the new 3rd-gen iPad to an earlier version of iOS 5 from iOS 5.1.1.

February seems to be the month of the iOS security bugs. And although we are fast approaching the end of the month, yet another flaw has been found which allows the passcode lock feature to be circumvented, giving unauthorized access to the device’s Camera Roll. Users have the option of setting a four digit passcode through the Settings menu which prevents the device from being unlocked without the necessary code being entered, but, it seems that this method of security in iOS is anything but flawless.

One of the hot topics surrounding not only iOS, but mobile operating systems in general is data security and privacy. Over the last couple of weeks there has been a lot of discussion on the world wide web about mobile applications accessing data without permission or prior notice, as well as independent reports about users being able to launch FaceTime calls and gain access to certain contact information on an iOS device. Only last week, we were also able to view a report from the University of California which used the PiOS tool to show us that official App Store applications leaked more data than their Cydia based counterparts. When all of this information is put together, it hasn’t been a very good two weeks for the reputation surrounding iOS security.

It seems that the iPhone owning and application using world has been going a little bit loopy over the last few days thanks to the revelations that popular journal application Path has been liberating entire address books of data and uploading it to their servers in the form of a plist file without asking for the user’s permission. The company CEO David Morin quickly responded to the outrage by claiming that the name, telephone numbers and email addresses of the user’s address book are captured to help users find friends and family who are using the Path application, but the bottom line is; that the contacts data doesn’t actually belong to the user and therefore they don’t even have permission to upload it should it ever be requested.

For owners of older iOS devices running Apple’s A4 processor; that good news came on Tuesday, 27th December, with the release of the iOS 5.0.1 untethered jailbreak, dubbed ‘Corona’. But whilst the A4 owners were enjoying their belated Christmas present, the owners of devices running Apple’s new dual-core A5 powerhouse had to look on in envy. If you have been an iPad 2 owner since launch, then you will no doubt remember that, thanks to JailbreakMe 3.0, an untethered jailbreak was possible on iOS 4.3.3, but that’s where the freedom ended.

Those who have been patiently waiting for the release of the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S untethered iOS 5.x jailbreak can breathe a tiny sigh of relief this evening, knowing that the time scales are shortening, and a public release approaching. We still haven’t had the green light from any of the developers involved that the jailbreak is ready for prime time, but with every blog and Twitter update; the signs are all pointing to the fact they Pod2g and his Dream Team of developers are winning their battle against the A5 devices.

Pod2g’s Corona untethered exploit for iOS 5.0.1 has breathed new life into a jailbreak community which has had little to shout about since the release of iOS 5 just over two months ago.

If you were one of the many people who were eagerly awaiting the iOS 5.0.1 untethered jailbreak, then I am pretty sure that on December 27th you took the plunge and liberated your device as soon as the tools were released by the development teams. Although everything may have seemed perfectly functional at first, chances are that if you attempted to launch iBooks, or various other applications then you would have experienced a crash.

It has been nearly eight weeks since the first declaration by pod2g that he had found a bug that he believed could provide an untethered jailbreak for iOS 5. We find ourselves exactly fifty days down the line, and what I imagine has been a lot of sleepless nights for the developers involved, but we now officially have the release of an untethered jailbreak for all A4 devices running iOS 5.0.1.

On the rare occasion that I go into Cydia these days, I very rarely check the top of the main page to see which SHSH that Saurik’s server has cached for me. At one point it was the first port of call and was almost second nature, having a quick glance to see if any new signatures had been saved on my behalf.

Contrary to an early notion, Apple managed to deliver more than a couple of surprises when it re-released iOS 5.0.1, which was specifically seeded for iPhone 4S users suffering battery issues.

Siri modding and porting has been aplenty over the course of the last two months, with modders, developers and spectators collectively keeping a watchful eye on Apple’s voice-recognition technology.