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Windows RT Jailbreak Tool Released
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this week, reports surfaced that the Windows RT operating system had been jailbroken to allow for the execution of unsigned ARM desktop applications. Microsoft quickly issued a statement saying it does not consider the findings to be part of a security vulnerability, and applauded the hacker for his ingenuity. Now, a Windows RT jailbreak tool has been released."
what'sthat?
A new and innovative way to lock hardware to only the applications that you want your users to run.
*sips coffee*
Oh, and apparently it failed to live up to the owners expectations to be locked down.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Kudos to MS for being good sports about it.
We applaud the ingenuity of the folks who worked this out and the hard work they did to document it. We’ll not guarantee these approaches will be there in future releases.
Translation: Thank you for carefully documenting how you jailbroke our new operating system. Your documentation will help us close that hole, even though it poses no security risk.
This is a very honest question, who would want to buy this Windows RT?
Actually Microsoft had the same response, after thinking a bit, to the jailbreaking of Windows Phone 7. No matter how hard you try, if one human, or group of humans, comes up with a protection scheme, another will figure out a way through or around it. Nature of the beast and the sooner others (Sony!?) get a clue, the sooner everyone can start thinking of more innovative things to do rather than waste resources this way.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
allow for the execution of unsigned ARM desktop applications
Awesome! Quick, somebody write some applications!
And then you end up in the situation jailbreakers are with iOS 6. There is still no jailbreak for the platform. And when one is released, Apple will patch it.
Playing silly cat and mouse games with vendors that do this is effort and time wasted. If you see value in using devices you purchase as you see fit, then buy from vendors that don't deliberately interfere with you and make those devices and the software for them better.
I'm sure the three people using windows rt are grateful.
...No matter how hard you try, if one human, or group of humans, comes up with a protection scheme, another will figure out a way through or around it...
Not really. A properly implemented secure bootloader is pretty much impossible to circumvent. It is enforced, in part, by immutable hardware. Have they cracked RIM's Playbook yet? Nope.
That said, if there is even a teeny, tiny exploitable error in the chain of security (hardware->bootloader->OS->application) somebody is going to figure out how to break it.
Most people who jailbreak don't do it for the value: they do it for the challenge. I doubt the ones who jailbreak iOS are thinking about all the cool new apps they'll get to run once they're finished: that's just a bonus. They're thinking that they want to be the one to break apple's security, to make apple scramble to fix it, and then to do it all over again.
Actually, I jailbroke my iPhone so I could change the MMS server because I wasn't able to access that setting. But I don't think that's what you're talking about.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
I was not used to that behavior... Things change at Microsoft!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Did you know that you could already compile and run your own apps on it? They even give you the dev tools for free: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/windows/apps/hh974577
That's like saying the ipad is open because you can get your apps by sending them through the app store. Not quite the same, but close enough that it doesn't make a big difference.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
The only reason I continue to use an iPhone is because it is jailbreakable. I'm still using 5.1.1, though, and won't upgrade to 6 until there is an untethered JB.
I see it as the best of both worlds. I do like Apple's walled garden because of the polish, quantity, and diversity of the app offerings, but I want to be able to knock a hole in that wall every now and then when I want to do something they don't want me to do (wifi tethering, custom lock screens, custom notification badges, etc).
I think that's a good mix for Apple, too. They get to lock down the OS so the vast majority of non tech-savvy customers don't wind up breaking their precious iDevices installing malware, but the holes still exist for the more adventurous users. Call it plausible deniability, maybe? However, if they ever succeed in truly battening down the hatches and making jailbreaking impossible, I'll be forced to jump ship.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
If they can maintain their independence from Microsoft, unlike the sellouts from the WP7 era, more power to them.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Sydin was referring to the developers of the jailbreak tools, not the users.
Exactly why I bought an SGS 2 so I can put Android 4.1 and Debian 7 on it.
But in the same written statement, MS said it will be patched in the future.
I really don't see the point of jailbreaking this device. There is no native Windows software that will run on it because that's all x86 code. You could run .NET code (at least some, we don't know if the full .NET is in there). And while it's possible to write native Windows programs for ARM, who's really going to do that for the few systems that are jailbroken?
BTW, there is no simple jailbreak procedure to invoke this. It's complicated.
I know this is /. and we rabble rabble hate M$$$$$ rabble, but can someone point me to another company that actually applauded the hackers who jailbroke their hardware? The standard reaction is quite the opposite.
It's time wasted unless you do it for entertainment purposes. Some people enjoy crosswords, some prefer cracking and jailbreaking.
It's not a half bad way to learn about software and systems in great depth and detail.
But its not. You're patronizing a hostile vendor.
Then perhaps the right answer is, instead of giving money to a company that is hostile to you, that you should look around for a vendor who provides what you want. Android's done a good job at crippling that market however.
No. iOS 6 proves that this argument is and always has been shit. Apple doesn't give a flying fuck about jailbreakers and will fight them until they've got nothing and thus far Apple is winning.
You'll eventually jump ship.
A jailbreak is some sort of privilege escalation from inside a locked-down system, using bugs in the system. This "hack" just consists of attaching a debugger to the running system, which is perfectly allowed, and modifying the live memory. That might be hard, since debug symbols are probably not released by Microsoft and source code is not available, but it is by no means anything security-relevant.
Yes, which is why I mentioned TurboVNC which has been doing the same sort of thing for a couple of years. I think I know how RemoteFX works, what I don't know is how it performs.
Similar things of course even back in 1999 with that p90 and a 64CPU beast at the other end of a 10Mb/s pipe, I'd say exactly the same thing now with TurboVNC exporting a Windows7 screen running Rev-IT or blender or whatever.
Of course where RemoteFX and TurboVNC fail is they are just streaming bitmaps and they can't get the sort of acceleration you could get by sending less bits to do the same job in the form of OpenGL objects - like you could do back in 1999 and earlier with X. So while you may get something prettier than your local hardware could render in real time the frame rate is going to suck without a really fat pipe (so forget about wireless tablets doing it well) and you need at least some grunt in the graphics hardware to keep on refreshing those bitmaps so you may as well be rendering it locally anyway from 3D information on the server (eg. use OpenGL).
I can't see RemoteFX or TurboVNC as a viable option for something with a lot of 3D graphics and requiring decent frame rates. With your Rev-IT example I'm assuming it's a different story if it's like other solid modelling packages and there's not a lot of change to refresh (compared to a 3D game with lots of movement, textures etc) so any of the three options is going to look OK.
Maybe so, but in the meantime, I like my iPhone. When my contract is up next year, if jailbreaking is over, I'll jump ship.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Whereabouts?
The quote I see is
It's the ARM version(s?) of Windows 8
What makes it innovative?
they said the same thing about playstation. then geohot got bored, and broke it ...
seems maybe just no one had tried before what with the boot linux option that WAS there.
You can compile and run your own apps on it if you happen to have completely rewritten them as metro apps. I wonder whether this jailbreak could unleash a protest movement to enable compiling WIN32 desktop code for ARM. Do the tools even exist for that?
Just because Microsoft wants to force-feed their phone/tablet ecosystem - and are willing to screw win32 developers to do it - doesn't mean there aren't plenty of win32 dev's with code out there they'd like to port. Microsoft should've provide a way to either make that code runnable in desktop mode on ARM or to minimally rewrite it to a metro wrapper that closes some security holes, etc, but allows an upgrade path. Maybe a popular revolt would do the trick.
Seriously, the attempt to deprecate desktop mode in Windows 8 is its biggest shortcoming - and I say that having just happily bought a new Windows 7 desktop yesterday (to run Linux on, but hey...). But apparently the old monopoly magic is gonna make Windows 8 succeed on PC's. Not so much on tablets.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
I see their compliment sort of like a scene in an action movie:
"Ah, Mr. Bond. Your escape from my heavily armed henchmen was clever. Very clever, indeed. But let's see how clever you are when I drop you in the piranha tank."
It's good PR on their part to not act offended, but I would bet they are.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
But its not. You're patronizing a hostile vendor.
I'm also an iPhone user. I don't see Apple as a hostile vendor; they're a vendor of more failsafe products
Then perhaps the right answer is, instead of giving money to a company that is hostile to you, that you should look around for a vendor who provides what you want. Android's done a good job at crippling that market however.
No. iOS 6 proves that this argument is and always has been shit. Apple doesn't give a flying fuck about jailbreakers and will fight them until they've got nothing and thus far Apple is winning.
You'll eventually jump ship.
No. It just lets you run unsigned desktop applications.
The Apple walled garden results in a more failsafe user experience compared to alternatives such as Android. The higher price-points of their devices also attract a customer-base that is not averse to actually purchasing apps. In addition to a user-base more inclined to buy apps to begin with, the walled garden virtually eliminates malware, and greatly reduces the level of piracy of paid apps. Developers can make money on the iOS platform much more readily than on Android, despite the smaller marketshare. For me as a user, this translates directly into higher quality, more usable and polished apps on iOS compared to Android. Apple actively combats jailbreaking as a proxy war against app piracy, third-party in-app purchase capability, and unauthorized wifi tethering. The first one is Apple protecting the value of their platform, the second is protecting their bottom line, and the third is carrier placation.