Google TV Hackers Open a Shell on the Chromecast; More Hacks To Follow

Via Engadget comes the news that Google's latest (and quickly sold-out) toy, the Chromecast, may soon be hacked out of one-trick-pony status; just a few days after it came out, the folks at GTV Hacker have successfully turned their attention to the Chromecast, and managed to exploit the device's bootloader and spawn a root shell. Some interesting findings, as explained in their blog post: "[I]t’s actually a modified Google TV release, but with all of the Bionic / Dalvik stripped out and replaced with a single binary for Chromecast. Since the Marvell DE3005 SOC running this is a single core variant of the 88DE3100, most of the Google TV code was reused. So, although it’s not going to let you install an APK or anything, its origins: the bootloader, kernel, init scripts, binaries, are all from the Google TV. We are not ruling out the ability for this to become a Google TV 'stick.'"

Comments

Any Ideas?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Google's "Chromebooks" have a fairly trivial (and documented/vendor-provided) mechanism for booting whatever you want on them. They default to using the crypto-tastic signed image; but it's not a hack to turn that off.

The phones that they sell directly (at least if you don't count the...um...wonderful people at Motorola) also tend not to be terribly touchy on that score.

Google TV devices, though, and now this 'Chromecast' thing they lock up tight. Are they trying to appease some paranoic video rightsholder? Is there some benefit to Google that I'm not seeing? Why the (comparatively) hands-off treatment of other devices compared to the freaking out about things that connect to TVs by default? It's doubly odd because many contemporary phones and tablets can connect to TVs, though that isn't their primary use case.

Re:Any Ideas?

[CastrTroy]

It's obviously quite highly subsidized. At $35 for the Chromecast and 3 months of free Netflix (even with an existing account), the cost to existing Netflix subscribers is about $11. They are planning on making money from renting/selling movies on Google Play store, and probably more money through affiliate programs sending new customers to Netflix and other programs that will probably be on there in the future like Hulu and Amazon Prime. If everybody just buys them and installs another OS on them, they won't make much money. With the phones, tablets, and chromebooks, they are selling them above cost price, so they don't have to make up the difference by people renting movies and such.

Re:Any Ideas?

[iluvcapra]

"if we can't do it supercoolmegaright then don't do it at all and don't let the user to do it all"

Users have a habit of loading up phone banks with the stuff that doesn't work mega-right, even if they had to do some mild circumvention in order to try in the first place.

Google's goal (as with all of its hardware products) is to make something with no manual, no learning curve and no technical support, aside from user-supported forums, so they're going to be parsimonious about what they implement. They want you to buy the box, happily use it (to generate clickstream and view ads), and never mention the box to them again.

Re:Any Ideas?

[bloodhawk]

Googles goal has never been to make things better or more accessible, quite often that is a side effect of their actual goal "to make bucket loads of money selling advertising and your personal information".

Re:Just buy an Android 'stick'

[TFlan91]

Devices where users only have to plug in and switch to the related input on their TV will win. Regardless of whatever techies moan and groan about, simplicity and elegance is what sells (did you not pay attention during the initial iPhone craze?)

No one is going to want to buy an empty usb drive, install their own choice of OS, required streaming programs, etc, after-which they then have to CONFIGURE it (I know, scary word).. see where I'm going with this though? No average Joe or Jane is going to do that, they will spend the seemingly cheap $35? (I can't remember the price) for this fancy stick that has the word Google written on it.

Re:Just buy an Android 'stick'

[spire3661]

Its CHEAP and backed by google. you would have more of a point if it werent so insanely cheap. I have lots of ways of getting video to my TVs I have an HDMi distribution panel that reaches every TV in the house, I have 3 win7 MCE DVRs, 3 Apple TVs + a mac mini that can stream anything to them., several Micca players, etc. I like Chromecast because its cheap, easy to use and I can slap one on every Tv for less then a single Apple TV. For the price, it represents a good value.