Droid X Self-Destructs If You Try To Mod

An anonymous reader writes with some discouraging news for hack-oriented purchasers of the new Droid X phone: "If the eFuse fails to verify [the firmware information (what we call ROMS), the kernel information, and the bootloader version], then the eFuse receives a command to 'blow the fuse' or 'trip the fuse.' This results in the booting process becoming corrupted, followed by a permanent bricking of the phone. This FailSafe is activated anytime the bootloader is tampered with or any of the above three parts of the phone has been tampered with."

Comments

Who cares

[thren]

Someone will find a way around this very quickly

Re:Who cares

[NotBornYesterday]

I've already found a way to get around this. I'll never buy one.

Just add Motorola (and/or Verizon) to the list of companies that don't understand open platforms or respect end user rights. There are other pricey toys out there to choose from.

Re:Who cares

[mcgrew]

The way around it is simple -- don't buy one! It's not like there aren't any other Android phones out there.

Re:Who cares

[marcansoft]

I've worked with security systems and I can definitely say that the guy who wrote that post doesn't know what he's talking about. I've hever heard of "resettable" eFUSEs. He keeps talking about eFUSEs as if they had some kind of power to control or supervise the boot procedure, which is bollocks - eFUSEs are storage elements, you need some kind of boot ROM to make use of the data and make decisions. And you don't "write programs in JTAG". Until someone writes something technically coherent about this issue, I'd take all of this with a huge grain of salt.

eFUSEs can indeed be used for this kind of self-destruct-on-tamper behavior, but honestly I would be very surprised if it were actually implemented this way on a retail handset. Deliberately designing brickage into a unit is just a bad idea overall (except for security devices, e.g. HSMs and smartcards).

Re:Who cares

[yurtinus]

This is the exact same conversation that takes place regarding the iPhone closed platform - Somebody lists some restrictions they don't approve of and somebody else says "So? Don't buy one if you don't like it!" This misses the point entirely. The proper response to seemingly arbitrary restrictions on my (hypothetical) device is to not buy one, and then tell other folks who might be interested *why* I chose not to buy one. A handful of lost sales probably won't be noticed on a popular device, but some lost sales coupled with as much bad press as we can make might force some change. We first have Apple placing arbitrary restrictions on their device, now the primary competitor is doing the same - How many times does this story need to repeat itself until we're out of options?

Re:iPhone Evil, Android Good

[MBGMorden]

In this case it's more a case of "Motorola Evil". Google provides the OS but the manufacturer still integrates it into the device.

My next upgrades isn't until December, but I can already say that Droid X is off the table. Hopefully HTC will have out something new and shiny by then. If not, I'll still go for the Incredible over the X. I've had nothing but trouble from Motorola phones anyways.

How is this legal?

[macemoneta]

If I purchase the phone outright, wouldn't this be willful destruction of property on Motorola's part? Does a company have the right to destroy a purchased product - after the sale - if the consumer doesn't use it in a prescribed manner?

Re:How is this legal?

[powerlord]

uddenly, Motorola is facing hundreds of small claims suits. They're still likely to settle them all out of court for the cost of the phone, but perhaps the next time they make a phone someone in the initial design meeting says "Ya know, the fuse function really seemed to piss off a lot of people, people who are now likely buying phones from our competitors. Maybe we shouldn't take that route again."

No.

They are likely to petition to have all these Small Claims rolled up into a Class Action suit (or some intrepid lawyer will, hoping to cash in on money they will make by battling Motorola).

A judge is likely to grant the petition, and then Motorola can let their lawyers into the mix.

Flash forward 5-10 years before the results actually matter (although it always possible Motorola MAY learn from this before then).

Re:iPhone Evil, Android Good

[squiggleslash]

Well, it's more of a Motorola issue than an Android issue. Just because an operating system is open doesn't mean the corporation that installed it isn't going to be a jackass.

It's not as if there's no precedent for this. There's a certain operating system based upon open source components from Mach, FreeBSD, GNU, and KDE, which is somewhat infamous for being closed. At least you can load and run your own programs onto the Droid X, even if you can't update the operating system to your own version.

Not a good idea, Moto and Verizon...

[Svartalf]

Ah... I guess I won't be buying a DroidX then. Sad, really... I was looking forward to getting one when the contract was up on my Droid.

And I've been very happy with my Droid. Now, one wonders...was this done to suit Verizon or if it was on Moto's own thinking that it was done. I might not have modded my phone when I got it, but doing things like this are a real put-off. I bought the phone, it's mine to do with as I see fit- and putting in things like this take that away from me. It turns it into Motorola's device or Verizon's device and I'm just renting it. Sorry, you SOLD me a phone guys and if you're concerned about "user experience" or "risks to the network" design the damn phone to not need to be concerned about EITHER- and anything else is lying to the customer outright.

I do, actually...

[Svartalf]

Sure they will... But I don't appreciate having them try to transform it more into a rental of the device than a sale- and then framing it in as a sale. I'm sure there's other people that'll view it the same way as I.

Sadly, I'm fairly sure Verizon asked Moto to do this- they always seem to find a way to miss the point and try to assert "control" over everything.

Re:I do, actually...

[Shakrai]

Sadly, I'm fairly sure Verizon asked Moto to do this- they always seem to find a way to miss the point and try to assert "control" over everything.

Remember Verizon's "open network" imitative that was announced in 2008? Two years ago -- so where's my market for open non-branded devices that I can use on the Verizon Network? Surely they didn't make that announcement just to forestall regulation and maintain their walled garden, right?

Re:I do, actually...

[Lumpy]

Then dont buy it. Hell spread it far and wide that you WONT buy it and why. How it has a self destruct built in.

Give the Droid X a major PR black eye and suddenly companies wont try this crap again for a while...

Honestly, non nerdy friends do listen to us when we say, "oh god no, dont buy that, it has this major problem with it"

Invitation to brick?

[swanky]

Because of this setup--isn't it entirely possible that some sort of malware can be created to actually attempt to brick the phone by triggering efuse?

It's the principle of the thing and more.

[wonkavader]

A hardware company actually put a self-destruct mechanism in the phone when you change the software.

A. This will get tripped accidentally, even for naive users, and will cost owners money to fix.
B. This violates the idea of ownership of the device. Motorola figures that they're licensing you parts, not selling. For an "open" OS, this is insane.
C. Once you get around it, unless you can destroy the code, you still have that thing hanging around. A mistake or bad combination later on could trip it -- there's no reason to have to put up with walking through a minefield.

All this translates to "Spread the news, blacklist the phone, send a message to Motorola." Because if this goes on as a "who cares" thing, all Motorola Android phones will have it in future and other companies will follow suit.

This needs to be a black eye for Motorola, they need to notice that, and they need to quickly backpedal.

Re:It's the principle of the thing and more.

[mdm-adph]

Open Software != Open Hardware. Just throwin' that out there.

Re:It's the principle of the thing and more.

[YouWantFriesWithThat]

no one is asking for Motorola to honor the warranty, they are pissed that Motorola is going to intentionally sabotage the product after it is sold to their customers.

to reiterate: void warranty, fine; brick phone, bad

Re:It's the principle of the thing and more.

[geckipede]

Having the phone effectively destroy itself such that it can only be repaired by the manufacturer is not comparable to voiding the warranty.

Re:It's the principle of the thing and more.

[Mysticalfruit]

It's about the principle of it. You've long since stopped buying a merely a cellular phone and moved on to buying something akin to a hand held computer. Yeah, your on their network, but you own the phone. Your not leasing it, your not renting it. You slapped down several hundred dollars of your money for something that you can't modify to your liking.

If tomorrow Dell came out with a new line of computers that prevented you from putting your Linux distribution of choice on it by zeroing out the bios and the bootloader so it was rendered unbootable the fury would be cataclysmic. Even though 99 percent of the people who buy computers don't change the operating system.

+1000. Goodbye Moto, Hello HTC

[brunes69]

This is just another nail in the coffin for Motorola, who becomes more and more irrelevant every year, being pushed out of the market on both sides by Apple and HTC.

HTC makes the most robust and moddable phones on the planet, and do not try to stop the modding in any way - in fact one may say they passively encourage it.

This post is coming from someone who owns a 4 year old HTC Vogue that came shipped with Windows mobile 6.0, but thanks to the modders, has been upgraded to 6.1 and 6.5, and more recently ove rthe past 3 months, has been running a fully working version of Android that is lightning fast. All on 4 year old hardware.

This is what can be done when you don't shut out your customers - I am an HTC purchaser for life now.

Re:+1000. Goodbye Moto, Hello HTC

[LWATCDR]

As if this will make any difference to the masses?
Please nobody will care about this. If it mattered Verizon wouldn't have any customers at all since it has a long history of locking down phones are removing functionality.
This just isn't on most users radar.

Re:+1000. Goodbye Moto, Hello HTC

[yurtinus]

He did just tell a bunch of people that if they buy an HTC phone, they might not need to buy another one for four years... That sounds pretty good to me!

Citation needed

[rumith]

I did follow the TFA to the origin of the story (MyDroidWorld forum), and I still don't see any code, captured data or even a photo of the said eFuse chip inside the DroidX. I understand that the original poster appears to be a reputable hacker, but come on, what kind of real reporting is this? Can anyone else verify these claims? More information needed, thank you very much whoever posts it, because if true, this is an outrage.

Re:iPhone Evil, Android Good

[aesiamun]

There's also another OS that is based upon open source components from Mach, FreeBSD, GNU and KDE which allows me to install whatever I want without having to jailbreak, root, break bootloaders, etc...Clicky

Re:Ouch

[Attila Dimedici]

In reality, the main appeal of Android operating systems is that they give phone manufacturers a serious competitor to Apple and they don't have to pay Microsoft. Not to mention, they probably don't care for Windows Mobile.

The problem is that what made the Android OS a serious competitor to Apple was that it wasn't locked. If a phone running Android is locked as tight as an Iphone, I may as well get the Iphone and the "coolness" of owning an Apple product.

A nice class-action suit

[markus_baertschi]

I hope Motorola get's a nice class-action suit out of this.

Imagine a nice little virus, designed to trigger the 'self-destruct' and some innocent users getting infected.

Markus

Re:Ouch

[mlts]

Don't forget that Motorola phones only have a few die-hards working on ROMS. Compare the forum for the CLIQ on modmymoto.com to the ones for HTC devices on xda-developers. The iPhone also has a big jailbreaking/modding scene, and I'm sure there will be a bunch of cool apps on Cydia once iOS 4.1 comes out and is jailbroken.

If I were to buy an Android phone, I'd go with an N1, or the "official" Google stuff. Second choice will be almost any HTC device because they actually put out source and tools to help with modding.

Tivoization

[Errol backfiring]

It's like Tivoization: the software is open, but the hardware blocks any changes.

GPL violation?

[Urkki]

Is all the GPL code in Android under such a version of GPL, that this is legal? I mean, it prevents the user from changing certain parts of the GPL software, something which at least some versions of GPL require, as far as I understand.

GPL v3

[Excelsior]

Isn't this exactly what the GPL v3 is designed to prevent (Tivo-ization)? Seems like FSF's concerns are once again coming true. Too bad Linux won't ever adopt v3, it seems.

While I love a good ragefest

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

While I love a good ragefest, wouldn't it be prudent to check the facts?

Droid, DroidX, Droid2 and others -- they all have this efuse, it's nothing new. Perhaps rather than making assumptions based on the presence of a device, someone could do some actual research to find out if this is really a concern? Just because the chip is present does not mean it's configured to brick the phone - it certainly hasn't done so in other Android devices using it.

Re:iPhone Evil, Android Good

[Low Ranked Craig]

From where I sit, Motorola / Verizon are more evil than Apple / AT&T. Well, OK, AT&T is pretty fucking evil, but the reality is that Apple has never been about open devices and so has never violated any trust with any communities, because iPhone has always been a walled garden. On the other hand Android is wide open, yet they are coupled with Verizon, notorious for locking down phones and removing features, and Motorola who knows fuck all about good software. Android + (Verizon and Motorola) seems like oil and water to me. Plus the Droid-X software seems to not be getting good reviews today: http://gizmodo.com/5587225/motorola-droid-x-review meaning that hacking it is even more desirable.

Re:I do!

[s73v3r]

Fuck you. They pointed out that there is exactly that at T-Mobile, and then you turn around and bitch some more? What more do you want?

Re:Mod?

[Baseclass]

If I paid for the hardware then it's mine, I own it, in spite of what big telcom wants you to think.
I was actually considering getting this phone, I guess they just lost a customer.