WinterBreak

After all, all devices have their dangers. The discovery of speech introduced communication – and lies.
- Isaac Asimov

WinterBreak is a jailbreak which was released on New Year’s Day 2025 by HackerDude

It is based on Mesquito

Special thanks to Marek, NiLuJe, Katadelos and all the beta-testers during the development of this jailbreak.

RIP bricked Kindles during beta-testing
RIP the original deadlines

Winterbreak/Mesquito does NOT work on firmware 5.18.1 and beyond.

Prerequisites

You will need a PC
Your Kindle must be registered
Your Kindle must have a valid, internet-connected WiFi network saved to it that it can connect to during steps 8 to 10 (inclusive)

If you face any issues, please check the troubleshooting section

If your Kindle is running a firmware version lower than 5.18.1 and is not yet registered, make sure to follow these steps to prevent your Kindle from automatically updating before registering your device with Amazon. This will help you avoid an automatic firmware update during the registration process.

Installation Guide

Download the latest WinterBreak release:

Download

Airplane Mode

Turn on Airplane mode on your Kindle

Rebooting

Reboot your Kindle

Extracting WinterBreak

Once it has booted, plug the Kindle into your computer and extract the contents of the WinterBreak.tar.gz file to a safe place on your computer

Then copy the files to your Kindle (do not extract direcly to the Kindle as this may fail). Replace any files if you are prompted to

For Linux/MacOS users, ENSURE the hidden folder .active_content_sandbox has been copied to your Kindle

Entering Mesquito

Eject the Kindle from your computer

Open the Kindle Store on your Kindle by clicking on the cart icon on the home screen

When prompted, click Yes to turn off Airplane mode

Once Mesquito has loaded you can re-enable Airplane mode.

Running WinterBreak

Click on the WinterBreak icon when it loads:

Done

Wait around 30 seconds, and your Kindle will say something along the lines of "Now you are ready to install the hotfix"

Once it does, turn Airplane mode back on and you can move onto the post-jailbreak stage!

If you do not see any funky text then make sure Airplane mode is disabled to avoid any automatic update. Turn it back on after you see the text though!

Troubleshooting

Kindle Store encountered an unexpected error

Faced this error and found a solution DiabloSat & Rexathion1

If an “Unexpected error” occurs when you try to log in to the Kindle Store or only the Kindle Store home page is displayed, try the following solutions:

Factory Reset your Kindle
Before registering - plug your Kindle into your PC, move the WinterBreak files to the root of your storage space
Login to your account, and enable Airplane mode as soon as possible
Connect your Kindle into your PC and delete the cache directory at the path .active_content_sandbox/store/resource/LocalStorage (skip this step if the LocalStorage directory does not exist)
Reboot your Kindle
Open the Kindle Store on your Kindle
When prompted, click Yes to turn off Airplane mode

Alternative solution

After successfully registered, plug your Kindle into your PC and delete the .active_content_sandbox folder, make sure to also delete any files with a name similar to update.bin.tmp.partial from your Kindle to prevent an automatic update
Reboot your Kindle
Disable Airplane mode and connect to a WiFi connection
Browse the regular Kindle Store for a couple of minutes to generate the files needed for Winterbreak to work, browse the book categories and download a free sample of any book
After a couple of minutes, enable Airplane mode and plug your Kindle into your PC again
Delete the cache directory in the path .active_content_sandbox/store/resource/LocalStorage. If this folder has not yet been generated, browse the Kindle Store for another couple of minutes until it is generated. Make sure to always delete the previously mentioned update.bin.tmp.partial file, especially before any rebooting
Once deleted, copy the Winterbreak files to your Kindle and reboot
Open the Kindle Store on your Kindle, when prompted, click Yes to turn off Airplane mode

Special Thanks To Our Courageous Beta Testers

Crystals (Bricked their PW4 testing)
mergen3107 (Came up with the “WinterBreak” name)
Bomberfish
BionicGecko
Juliet
Rie
Robotic
scrad
shamanNS
akane
BlackNinja
Gimzie
Elaine Roberts
Lux
Marek
terra