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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."
Seriously, I can understand your warranty being voided if you do unapproved modifications to a device, but designing the device so it blows up if you try to modify it is just wrong.
Why do hardware companies think they should have the right to own the device forever? Why should I buy a device that has a time bomb built in that may trip if the official software gets corrupted due to a bug?
The whole thing reeks. I'm done with Motorola. What is the point of this exactly? What does Motorola lose by you running a custom ROM? New phone sales when they decide after a year not to provide any Android updates?
eFUSE is a chip technology developed by IBM is a special type of chip where the code isn't completely static- based on the operation of the device, an eFUSE can blow itself. This can reroute the logic in a variety of ways, or be used as a self destruct mechanism.
It's reversible, but only by Motorola directly via JTAG. They have the custom code needed to flash the chip back to its original state.
Everything of this nature is legal, until it's brought before a court of law. Are you willing to put in years of stress and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars to file a suit against a Telecom giant that might reward you the cost of the phone? I don't think I would be, and companies like Motorola count on the fact that most people aren't.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Unlikely...
If they've put eFuse stuff on the phone, you might be able tapdance around the issue a bit- but the odds are good that if you're modding the phone you'll brick it. And it's liable to brick a few un-modded phones as well. There was a reason they quit using it a while back (this stuff is from the early part the last decade...)- and I'm kind of surprised they brought it back on this phone.
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You can legally buy a gun that only shoots in the direction of the person pulling the trigger, but it doesn't mean it's a good idea.
I don't like this as much as the next /. reader, but if they put a visible tamper warning on the phone that the owner has to take off or, unfortunately, buries such text in a EULA then it's legally fine. It's unfortunate that there's so much that goes into being an informed consumer these days, but this is a slippery slope. As much as I'd like to say "there should be regulations against this!" there are an equal amount of items that Motorola et al think they should be able to get away with that I think are bad ideas.
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I've heard that Cyanogen and other groups that do this sort of technical work on Android phones have sworn off the Droid X because options that are equally good as phones and won't make getting a custom ROM on a process that will destroy several phones and be risky every time someone flashes it themselves exist.
This is Motorola's doing, as HTC's phones have similar security features in the CPU (bootloader encryption is enforced by TrustZone) and yet they don't use it.
Go back a couple years and you can find papers from Motorola discussing how to lock down the user environment against modification. They're all about locking users out of their property.
So you take them to small claims court, where in many jurisdictions lawyers are not permitted. Motorola will have to send a corporate officer to represent the company. A much more likely outcome is that they'll settle with you prior to the hearing. All it takes is a few people to do this, and then blog about it and/or post info on social networking sites. Suddenly, 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."
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If one were of the risk-taking sort, the best way to oppose this sort of crap would probably be to disseminate a trojan app that trips this "efuse" system...
A few hacker nerds whining probably just makes Verizon smile. 10s of thousands of angry customers demanding replacement of their bricked phones, along with massive bad publicity would not.
I wonder how possible that would be.
Haha, that reminds me. I recently bricked my Wii, *real* brick by erasing IOS60 (the main "function" that makes the system boot), not even the "preventive" homebrew apps were helpful.
However, it was revived by a simple re-flash of the NAND chip using an specialized programmer.
I doubt this "fuse" brick will be unbreakable
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A locked-down bootloader is not uncommon on Android devices these days. That the Droid X bootloader is locked by no means demonstrates the ridiculous measures that the article claims Motorola have implimented.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Not true. Ask anyone on Rogers who has a HTC Dream phone just how modable it is.
Thanks to HTC and Rogers, it's locked down tighter than a duck's you-know-what. Why? So Rogers can claim the Dream is unable to run the latest Android, forcing you to buy a new phone (and probably another multi-year contract).
HTC did this at Rogers' request.
I would guess that if Verizon is the one that is requiring this of Motorola, then they are doing it to restrict people's ability to tether 2.2 without having to pay Verizon.
The Android 2.2 platform has built-in wifi tethering that you have to pay your carrier for in order to use, an extra $20/month or some such. Rather than do that, a quick root and install of a free wifi tether app allows the owner to bypass the carrier Tether requirements and build their own little wifi network to access the 'net from any wifi capable device without paying... The data becomes just another set of packets.
If you're looking for a business reason, that's it.
-SM
I am sorry but I do not see that Motorola acknowledged the use of eFuse technology. Yes, they locked the bootloader down just like they did with the Milestone (using encryption). Other than that it is pure speculation. Show me the pictures or show me a bricked phone and then we talk.
More importantly, after an airbag blows, if you want to, you could just shove the airbag out of the way and continue driving the car indefinitely. You can also replace that part (and only that part) without gutting and replacing the entire inside of the car.
By contrast, if an eFuse destroys itself, your whole phone is bricked, and can only be repaired by replacing the entire phone, or at least its main board.
An airbag is solely for safety, whereas a phone is a phone, and that single component is supposedly solely for "safety". If the phone were perfectly functional without it (albeit less "safe", then that would be fine. It's not. Therefore, an airbag and an eFuse are not comparable. Simple as that.
Designing self-destructing hardware should be illegal. Fundamentally, designing a device to deliberately damage itself is no different than deliberately designing a laptop to fail a few months after the warranty expires. It is selling a customer a product that you know to be fundamentally defective because you deliberately made it so, and doing this without remorse. Unless clearly labeled with "This hardware may destroy itself at any time", that's false advertising and fraud for starters.
The worst thing is that if they are building this in to detect firmware hacking now, what's to stop them from using it for something else in the future? Oh, you installed a ringtone that isn't approved. Say goodbye to your phone. Oh, you visited a website that is used by movie pirates (despite not being able to do anything significant there with your phone). We don't like that, either. Pop. Living in China? You received a phone call from a suspected dissident or went to a website that the government considers dodgy. We're killing your phone. And so on.
And what's to stop a virus from attacking the phone and simultaneously killing millions of these things worldwide on the same day? This is a glorified land mine, and we all have heard the statistics about how many tens of thousands of people are killed or maimed every year by those. Adding a feature like this into a product borders on suicidally stupid, and I really hope it blows up in their faces as soon as possible just so I can say, "I told you so."
Boycott MOT. This ends now.
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Reading comprehension is not your strength is it? 1) p3droid admitted right from the start that it was all guess work but somehow everybody ran with it and concluded that there should be "shame on Motorola" etc, 2) Motorola admitted to locking down the bootloader but not to bricking the phone in case an attempt to replace the bootloader was made. Btw, reports came in that the Droid X does not get bricked when trying to fiddle with the bootloader.
In past days this would be properly seen as a hardware quirk to be worked around. Like a buggy SCSI controller which trashes your disks when you hit it with an obscure command sequence. You don't throw up your hands, foam at the mouth, and threaten the manufacturer! You figure out what you need to do to avoid the undesirable behavior.
My God, you modder people are turning into a bunch of pussies and whiners. THE WHOLE POINT OF WHAT YOU ARE DOING is to have fun and push the hardware into areas it was not meant to go. In this case, the manufacturers have laid a few things in your path to make life interesting. Take it as a challenge, as we've always done in the past, rather than acting like a whiny bitch. My God, the hacker spirit is well and truly dead.