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Motorola's Sholes Bootloader Unlocked
teh31337one writes "Motorola's locked bootloader for their Sholes-family devices (Droid OG, Milestone, DroidX, Droid 2 etc, not Atrix 4G) has finally been cracked. @nenolod explains on his website: The Motorola Sholes platform uses a trusted bootloader environment. Signatures are stored as part of the CDT stored on the NAND flash. mbmloader verifies the signature on mbm before passing control. mbm verifies all other signatures before allowing the device to boot. There is a vulnerability in the way that Motorola generated the signatures on the sections stored in the CDT. This vulnerability is very simple. Like on the PlayStation 3, Motorola forgot to add a random value to the signature in order to mask the private key. This allowed the private key and initialization vector to be cracked. This comes at the time when HTC are also stepping up their attempts at locking down their phones . The recently released LTE flagship — ThunderBolt is their most locked-down phone to date ... They made signed images, a signed kernel, and a signed recovery. They also locked the memory."
Even with the cracked bootloader, the company's attitude is not good, so I won't buy a phone from them.
... as a programmer is to spend less time trying to hack, tweak, or otherwise add value to platforms owned by companies who want to strip away my rights as a user to modify and operate those platforms as I see fit.
Why do they spend so much money locking down the phone instead of making a competitive, lasting product that the consumer actually wants? "They also locked the memory.", what the fuck.
Disagree != mod troll.
Sorry, but we shouldn't have to fight teeth and nails to get proper access to devices we buy and own.
Being locked out of our own legally purchased devices is NOT normal.
Kind of like buying a computer and not being able to do what you want with it.
Wait, what is this OSX upgrade you tell me about? Sounds great, and only 29.99!
No wit here.
With a locked phone they can give the provider control over the phone (read: appstore ), and the telecom provider. I think Motorola hopes to make extra money from the provider instead of the consumer.
You are right, if consumers wanted a closed phone they would have bought a iPhone. an android phone is NOT a closed environment, and locking one part down in an open environment leaves a mediocre (in comparison) product.
Why can't you use your own phone as you please, even more so if it's Android, an open platform?
The only reason I can think of is piracy, which seems to be the justification for everything nowadays.
Seriously, this is a genuine question, not some sort of philosophy.
In theory:
1. To appease the carriers. The less control end users have over how they use their device, the better. This allows carriers to charge out the ass for things like tethering...
2. Planned obsolescence. If every user could upgrade their device to the next version of Android easily, you'd get (*gasp*) people only buying a new phone every 4 years instead of every one or two...
3. To minimize support costs - there's always a few idiots out there that'll brick their phones and then try to RMA them. Of course, switching to PC type OS upgrade/installation system would eliminate that problem right away.
Fixed that for you.