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Droid X Gets Rooted
An anonymous reader writes "The Droid X forums have posted a procedure to root the new Motorola Droid X, putting to rest Andoid fans' fears that they would never gain access to the device's secrets due to a reported eFuse that would brick the phone if certain boot files were tampered with. Rooting the phone is the first step in gaining complete control over the device."
Did anyone actually believe the device would never be rooted? If it is released, it will be hacked. It may not be immediate, but if there is enough interest then in time the blocks will be circumvented.
-tgpo
It was only a matter of time. Besides, isn't rooting the phone separate from the bootloader, which modifying triggers the eFuse?
"The Droid X forums have posted a procedure to root the new Motorola Droid X, putting to rest Andoid fans' fears that they would never gain access to the device's secrets due to a reported eFuse that would brick the phone if certain boot files were tampered with. Rooting the phone is the first step in gaining complete control over the device."
Man.. if I had read that summary two years ago when Android was starting to take off my heart would have sank.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
They may have rooted the device, but due to the cryptographic signature on the bootloader, kernel, and eFuse watching the ROM, you won't be sticking Android 2.3/3.0 on your Droid X (or Milestone) until Motorola decides you worthy.
If this lockdown was going to be fully hacked, it would have happened to the Milestone by now.
Why do people support companies that treat you like a criminal? We all know Apple is a fascist company (down to selling Mussolini speeches in app store) and know to expect this shit from them, but I thought Android was about openness? In comparison, this is how you root Nokia N900: http://techie-buzz.com/mobile-news/rooting-n900.html
Maybe Motorola needs pointers on how to spread propaganda from Apple?
-- (this is a sig) My Computer Programming Forumhttp://www.programers.co.nr/
I doubt that there is a better phone that is easier to play with. ;~}
And it works pretty good as a phone.
MEK
Credo quia impossibilis -- Tertullian
"the first step in gaining complete control over the device." The first step in gaining complete control over the device . . . (?!) Am I the only person who finds it strange that we don't have complete control over devices we purchase by default? I mean . . . I know, I know, and I know. But still--all of this back and forth effort just seems retarded. Surely there is a better way to do this.
First of all there was never any sort of self-destruct device in the phone. The phone contains a bootloader that only loads signed roms which so far has prevented people from loading custom roms such as Cyanogen. The Motorola Milestone (european Droid) has the same issue, has been out for 8 months, and has yet to be cracked.
It's funny that the summary for this article has the text "putting to rest Andoid fans' fears that they would never gain access to the device's secrets due to a reported eFuse that would brick the phone" and links to a Slashdot story titled "Droid X Self-Destructs If You Try To Mod". So Slashdot posts a story with a bogus headline, and then later has another story saying how fear was created when it was "reported" that the phones would be bricked. Never stopping for a second to reflect on the fact that Slashdot itself was the one doing the bad "reporting".
While gaining root access is good news this particular exploit is one that has been around for a while and is ported from another version of Android on another phone. Not to dismiss the work that has been done here but the biggest problem for this device is and has always been the bootloader.
if something is rooted - it's either been broken or copulated with. Especially sheep.
Root is available, but not new rom images. Root is just a small first step. It will not really help in getting around the signed bootloader.
Tethering just allows you to surf using your phone but with a prettier UI
The prettier UI encourages more utilization of the network. This imposes costs on the provider, as it needs to put up more towers to handle more utilization. Once these networks get saturated, you'll start to see providers like AT&T replacing unlimited plans with plans that charge per GB.
"putting to rest Andoid fans' fears that they would never gain access to the device's secrets due to a reported eFuse that would brick the phone if certain boot files were tampered with"
This in no way puts that to rest. Rooting your device doesn't touch the boot partition at all. What should put to rest the bricking issue is Motorola straight up saying it won't happen. (see here)
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
Serious question firm an iPhone owner... I've always thought that the appeal of Android was that it was wide open. That had me considering picking up one in the future. If I have to perform what sounds like a jailbreak why should I not stick with my current (and possibly future) jail broken iPhones?
I must be missing something, please fill in the blanks.
Trolling is a art,
...I just rooted your mom!
you know, Germany's decent into madness started out that way... "National Socialism appeals to certain aspect of my beliefs." "It's not interfering with my life, and it serves certain purpose in my life." etc. etc. that produced a regime which would later murder millions.
Surely, a phone maker won't be rounding up people and sending them to gas chamber anytime soon. But it's all these baby steps to continuously pushes the tolerance of people toward the ultimate goal of total domination over their users...
Taco and friends are imbeciles.
This is one of the reasons Linus kept the kernel GPL2 rather than moving to GPL3. He did not like the DRM clause and the Tivoisation clause. As far as Linus is concerned the manufacturers should be able to use DRM to block you from loading an OS they do not want you to load http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/51826
In relation to the Motorola Milestone, which shares the locked bootloader with the Droid X.
Motorola are now "deciding" whether to push out Android 2.2 (with, you know, the Flash support *promised on the box*) to the device at all
For me - I've "decided" that they aren't getting more of my business - as far as I am concerned, they can go f*** themselves.
From James King, Motorola Marketing Director:
Next European Milestone and 2.2 (Froyo). I have expressed over the last few days that the decision is pending. The team here has been collating key pieces of information and views from this community in the last month and providing input to relevant teams in Motorola so they are aware. I am pushing for that decision to be made as quickly as possible, and we can then all go from there. Some others ask why the decisions on upgrades take so long, and why does implementation then take much longer still. What I can say and have stated recently is that upgrades are not a walk in the park. Sure there are short cuts that people can take, but when you have to integrate software to a specific hardware, then test it and integrate with third party applications, let alone any innovation from ourselves, plus then get approvals to make this all official and safe its is a big undertaking that requires planning and resource and third party coordination to see this all through. As I say, once we have decision, we will inform. JK
it is an open phone. Imagine how hard it would if it had been a closed phone.
if you need to go to all this trouble to get control over the phone, the device was rooted from the start.
So, where are the Google fanboys that like to complain that Apple phones are SOOO CRIPPLED because Steve Jobs is TEH SATAN!?
I think for the freedom of the software world, we need to solve the discrete logarithm problem. There will never be freedom as long as it is mathematically possible to make digital signatures.
I said when the Xbox 1 came out that the way of the future was for all devices to have this digital signature-based boot loader stuff, now called Trusted Computing. I hate how I'm right so often.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
I'm so happy to own a Droid X, so happy it's been rooted and I'm so happy to hear it from slashdot first!
For the record, slashdot linked to DroidXForums as if they were the originator of Rainabba's tutorial based on Birdman's root process, but in reality, DroidXForums (B16 in particular) only copied the tutorial from http://alldroid.org/Default.aspx?tabid=40&g=posts&m=5734#post5734
In their defense, they [slahsdot] wouldn't know that AllDroid was the originator because B16 stripped his copy of the post to remove all mentions of Rainabba and failed to link to AllDroid or provide any notable mention of them. B16 did later post a V2 of the tutorial (only after costing AllDroid as much as 49,000 hits) that properly credited and links the real authors and contributors.