According to Engadget, the iPhone Dev Team, an unofficial group of programmers who developed the jailbreaking tools that opened up iPhone 1.0.1, have crafted a second set of tools that exploits a vulnerability in Mobile Safari to open iPhone 1.1.1. They’ve not yet released a general-use version of the tool, but one is surely on the way.

That said, there’s no telling how long it will work once it’s released. As Engadget notes, these newer jailbreaks aren’t nearly as robust as their predecessors. “… Unfortunately, it sounds like most (if not all) of these new hacks rely solely on that single TIFF exploit in Mobile Safari, meaning that everyone’s back to square one the moment Apple beams v1.1.2 to the public at large.”

Actually, it does get bricked out. Sources at Apple tell Ars Technica that the activation limbo into which unlocked iPhones are sent is the company’s definition of “bricking”: “Current attempts to reactivate across the Web are failing and therefore [a hacked] iPhone cannot be used to do anything–no phone calls, no Safari, no iPod, nothing. An unlocked iPhone that runs firmware update 1.1.1 is unusable no matter what SIM is in it.”

UPDATE:The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) reports that Apple Stores around the country are restoring bricked iPhones. “We’re not sure whether they’re doing a low-level reflash or just swapping units out,” TUAW explains. “We have reports of at least four customers who walked in with iBricks and walked out with iPhones. It is unclear at this time whether these customers unlocked their iPhones or not–we’re also receiving reports of iBricks from people who never unlocked or modded their units.”