Saving your SHSH blobs is not necessarily a complicated process, but with many new Jailbreakers joining the Jailbreaking Community everyday I thought it may be a good idea to write a generalized guide for saving your SHSH blobs with TinyUmbrella (I plan on doing a tutorial for iFath in the near future as well). So, without further hesitation let’s get into a couple frequently asked questions and then we will get right down to business.

Why Should I Save My SHSH Blobs?

Saving your SHSH blobs allows you to restore your iDevice to a lower firmware versions you are currently running. Meaning if you saved your SHSH blobs for iOS 4.3.3, but accidentally update to the iOS 4.3.4 firmware. You could easily downgrade back to the iOS 4.3.3 firmware. Where if you did not save your SHSH blobs on the iOS 4.3.3 firmware you could not of downgraded back from the iOS 4.3.4 firmware to the iOS 4.3.3 firmware. Having the ability to downgrade your iDevice’s firmware is useful for a number of reasons the most important reason being if you accidentally upgrade to a firmware version that cannot be Jailbroken.

What are SHSH Blobs and What Do They Stand For?

SHSH stands for Signature HaSH and it is a 128-byte RSA signature (a random string of numbers and letters), used in this case by Apple as a technique to verify if your iDevice can be restored or updated. Each individual signature created is termed a SHSH blob, or blob for short. Meaning, in not so technical terms, SHSH blobs are the magic key to restoring or updating your iDevice. You see, each time you try and restore or update your iDevice SHSH blobs are compared to one-another to verify that you are not trying to downgrade your iDevice’s firmware. Thus, saving your SHSH blobs is the only way to trick this security system put in place by Apple (Thanks iPadForums).

Now that you know a little bit more about SHSH blobs we will get right down into learning how to save your SHSH blobs.

Learn How To Save Your SHSH Blobs With TinyUmbrella

Step 1) - The first thing you will need to do is download TinyUmbrella to your computer. You can do so by clicking here (scroll down to TinyUmbrella section and download the version that is bold).

Step 2) - Once you download TinyUmbrella to your computer launch it and you should be presented with the interface show below.

Step 3) - The next thing you will need to do is plug your iDevice into your computer (if you have not already). Upon doing so TinyUmbrella will detect it in the connected devices tab.

Click on your iDevice in the connected devices tab now.

Step 4) - Once you click on your iDevice you will need to simply click the Save SHSH button in the top right hand corner of the screen and TinyUmbrella will begin saving your available SHSH blob. When the process is complete you should notice a list of saved SHSH blobs.

If all went well, you have now saved your SHSH blobs for the firmware version you are currently running.

Troubleshooting

If you did not get success with saving your SHSH blobs you may need to double check that Apple is still signing your firmware version. You can double check this at the developer of TinyUmbrellas website. When you are sure your firmware version is still being signed by Apple you may need to do the following:

Go into the Advanced Tab and uncheck the following:

When you Uncheck Request SHSH From Cydia go back to step 1 and try saving your SHSH blobs again.

Learning How To Downgrade Your iDevice With TinyUmbrella

Step 1) - When you have your SHSH blobs saved, and actually want to make use of them to downgrade your iDevice to a lower firmware version. You will need to once again launch TinyUmbrella, plug in your iDevice into your computer and click the Start TSS Server button.

Step 2) - Once the TSS Server has been enabled you will need to launch iTunes. With iTunes up and running click on your iDevice and then hold down the Shift key (Windows) or Alt key (Mac OS X) and click Restore button. Upon doing so a new dialog window will appear where you will need to select the firmware file you wish to restore to. Do this now, and your iDevice will begin being restored.

Step 3) - Once your iDevice has finished restoring you should encounter error 1015. When you receive this error all you will need to do is launch TinyUmbrella and click the Exit Recovery Mode button. Upon doing this your iDevice should reboot and function as normal. Congratulations, you have now downgraded your iDevice.

Troubleshooting

Restoring your iDevice can often times be a troublesome task full of errors. If you are experiencing errors what we suggest doing is restarting your computer, close all running applications besides TinyUmbrella and iTunes, and then plug your iDevice into a USB port you have not plugged it into before (or one that you usually don’t plug it into) and restart the restoration process. When you have tried the advice given above you may need to do the following:

Go into the Advanced Tab and uncheck the following:

When you Uncheck Set Hosts to Cydia go back to step 1 and try saving restoring your iDevice again.

Conclusion

Hopefully this in-depth guide on using TinyUmbrella has helped you gain a better understanding of why you should save SHSH blobs, how you save SHSH blobs using TinyUmbrella and how you can downgrade your iDevice using TinyUmbrella. If you require any further help please let us know in the comments section below…