Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Hacker Modifies Facebook Home To Work On All Android Devices

Posted by Soulskill on from the take-that-social-norms dept.

An anonymous reader writes "That was quick. Mere hours after Facebook Home arrived on Google Play, the launcher has been modified to remove the device-specific limitation. This means you can use the latest Facebook service on any Android device. The brilliant hackers at XDA Developers have done it again. This particular hack was performed by XDA Senior Member theos0o; who provides details and download links."

19 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Great! by UltraZelda64 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Thanks hackers, now Facebook will be able to more effectively track all Android users equally! It's so thoughtful for you to effectively to their crummy job for them...

    1. Re:Great! by Nerdfest · · Score: 5, Insightful

      FaceBook is still voluntary, as far as I can tell.

    2. Re:Great! by jhoegl · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So is an Address, but yet I must have one.
      Now I get a bunch of shit in the mail, people knocking on my door, and cars driving by with loud bass.
      Clearly, life is voluntary.

    3. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Perhaps a "friend" that moved out of town, and didn't provide you with their new contact details, doesn't want to be found by you ;)
      Thanks Facebook!

    4. Re:Great! by afidel · · Score: 2

      You don't have your "friends" email address? Because I've had my main email account for 9 years, my account that's now my spam catcher for 13, and can still get email forwarded from my dads account that he's had for 19 years. All of those dwarf having to find someones facebook account in convenience.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    5. Re:Great! by BrokenHalo · · Score: 3, Funny

      You mean if someone blows their own brains out in my country, they are not breaking any laws?

      If I blow my own brains out, you're welcome to stick my corpse in jail. The other inmates, however, might object.

      Whereas if you were to blow your brains out, you would have to aim very carefully. ;-P

    6. Re:Great! by vlueboy · · Score: 2

      We are never given a chance to judge the app's invasive permission schemes when it's already on a brand new phone. I would not download it on the Market if given the choice.

      Happily I have the option to do so -- my previous device had it in crapware where my only choice was to uninstall upgrades.

      Same here with cheap Android 2.2 device. If your device is rootable, you could had a choice of killing FB. Once rooted, you can use a root terminal to find the standard bin folder and move out or delete the facebook APK file. It disappears from the App list.

      I wish I had done that much earlier: A friend quickly signed in to check their facebook messages when I lent them the device, the masses don't even dream of using HTTP when there's a juicy app icon they can easily find. They must have hurriedly OK'd the first-run defaults, synching MY Phone contacts with THEIR FB login. I later found random people in my adress book led me to discover the problem.

      Even though I went back and decoupled his profile from my phone, Facebook will forever have my phone number, snapshots of my private contact list, location and whatever else researchers demonstrated is fair pickins for bad apps. I suspect that even if nobody ever ran the app on my phone, the SNS FB service had already given up all that info. Could be done periodically between the day I unboxed my phone and the day I uprooted it out of the phone.

  2. As E.T. would say by toygeek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Face-book-phooone-Hooome

    --
    Nobodies Prefect
    Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
  3. I'd like to see this guy's hat. by lxs · · Score: 4, Funny

    It must be the biggest, blackest hat in the history of the world.

  4. Erh... oooooo ... kaaaay? by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wake me when he manages to remove every trace of phone-home crap in there, then it's maybe news worth mentioning.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  5. I never ask this, but.... by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Usually I am happy to admire the skill and ability of hackers in doing something interesting, and never ask "Why?" or what practical purpose it might help with. I am satisfied to admire the hack for the hack's sake.

    But here, why? Do you really want Facebook Home? This hack is like saying, "oh, the Sony Rootkit only ran on Windows, let's port it to OSX so macboys can enjoy it too." Why would you do that? There are much more interesting things to do with your time. Like vacuuming your floor or something.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    1. Re:I never ask this, but.... by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Informative

      But here, why? Do you really want Facebook Home?

      Me? I don't. My sister? Her friends? Hell some of my friends? Yes.

      While you and I may disagree with Facebook, how it works and what it stands for there are people out there who use it for everything. I mean EVERYTHING. You're not on their Facebook list? They won't call you to invite you to a party. SMS? How quaint, just use Facebook messaging from any device and talk to multiple people at a time.

      There are literally people I can only talk to via Facebook because that is their mindset. They will line up to try Facebook Home.

    2. Re:I never ask this, but.... by rjr162 · · Score: 2

      Honest to god, no.

      I have a neighbor whos older (late 60s) and she is an absolute wreck when she cant get on facebook. Her daughter and the daughters husband live next door and I always know when shes having issues with her PC because they tell me "please fix her pc! Shes driving us crazy with the coming over to use our pc to get on facebook deal"

      She'll even tell you how crazy she goes waiting to get on facebook. She paces around, cant sit still etc just like she might as well be a junkie waiting for her next fix of heroin

  6. Facebook does not need help by Eravnrekaree · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What self respecting hacker would donate their precious time to helping out a Mark Zuckerberg and his company. Facebook does not need this help. Facebook are the only real winners of this little feat. There are better alternatives for people who dont want to support a shady company like Facebook

  7. Still Using Forums by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I see that the XDA community is STILL doing EVERYTHING in a god-damn forum. Nope. No code repositories here! Just download this link from this thread on this forum and have fun!

    1. Re:Still Using Forums by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's because much of what gets accomplished by the developers at XDA falls into the uneasy demilitarized zone where the manufacturers pretend it doesn't exist and look the other way, but technically much of what would be hosted would have at least bits and pieces that could be considered infringement of their respective trademarks, copyrights, and/or patents (example: tweaked & modded Samsung and HTC firmware).

      Due to the way trademark law works (vigorously fight all infringement, or risk losing it altogether), if XDA openly hosted files a-la-Github, they might as well paint a target on their metaphorical forehead. Likewise, as long as the files get hosted by services that are slightly shady, the manufacturers can rationalize it as an act of anonymous piracy that's largely beyond their control. If it were hosted at XDA itself, their lawyers would be firing off DMCA takedown notices (or worse) within minutes of posting.

      Manufacturers are more willing to look the other way when obtaining and flashing modified firmware involves jumping through a half-dozen annoying hoops. The more convenient it becomes, and the more likely less-technical end users are to use it, the more they (or at least their lawyers) feel compelled to fight for the sake of liability- and tech-support avoidance.

      It would be nice, of course, if we could just go out and buy best-of-breed Android hardware with open drivers and unlocked bootloaders, but the sad fact is that Google's Nexi haven't been bleeding-edge best-of-breed devices since the Nexus One (the GNex could have been, had they not squandered 6 months of exclusivity on Verizon, but by the time the GSM GNex came out, the S3 was just a month or two away), so if you want best of breed hardware with hackable firmware now, there isn't really an alternative to buying the latest phone from Samsung or HTC & using hacked and tweaked variants of the official firmware for 3-9 months until Cyanogen, AOSP, and AOKP catch up & have fully-working versions (as opposed to versions with broken Camera, GPS, 4G, or other subsystems that seem to inevitably break with every new version of Android).

  8. It's like grafting a pig's nose onto your face... by Bearhouse · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Great technical feat though that would be, it does not make it a good idea.

  9. Why did Facebook limit distribution of their app? by OldKingCole · · Score: 2

    I think there's a more interesting issue here... Why did Facebook, probably the world's largest harvester of user information after Google, launch their new app for only few selected devices? Perhaps (conspiracy theory ahead) they wanted to create a hype by releasing the app for only those few selected devices, but allow easy port for people with the proper knowledge?

  10. New business plan by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 2

    1) develop software for one platform only
    2) loudly trumpet that to maintain IP rights and control the product will never be developed for other platforms
    3) sit back and let hackers port it for you
    4) ...?
    5) Profit!