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Researcher Unlocks Galaxy S4 Bootloader For AT&T, Verizon Phones
Trailrunner7 writes "Those of you who like to tinker and jailbreak Android phones should take notice of some new research conducted on Samsung Galaxy S4 Android devices shipped by AT&T and Verizon. Both devicemakers ship the Galaxy S4 smartphones with a locked-down bootloader that prevents users from uploading custom kernels or from making modifications to software on the phone. Azimuth Security researcher Dan Rosenberg has found a vulnerability in the manner in which the devices do cryptographic checks of boot image signatures and was able to exploit the flaw and upload his own unsigned kernel to the device."
Unfortunately this is not a bootloader unlock, it allows you to load unsigned kernels and recovery images but the bootloader must be exploited each time you install a new image. Further it's easily fixed and the next OTA from at&t/vzw is expected to patch it.
It should be made illegal to lock cell phones. As nice as the S4 is, pick up a Nexus 4 and have a phone you don't need to 'jailbreak'.
Samsung is the device maker.