5 ms·
Why would you want this? The iPhone 7 has a broken bootloader, which is what makes this possible in the first place. It's impossible to be sure of the integrity
by RL_Quine 7y ago
Why would you want this? The iPhone 7 has a broken bootloader, which is what makes this possible in the first place. It's impossible to be sure of the integrity of the device when you can just get root over USB. It's likely to require tethering to boot every single time, so you have a functionally useless device.
- ianai 7y agoThe hope is that someday you don’t have to do those things. If Linus had that mentality Linux wouldn’t exist.
- RL_Quine 7y agoLinus wasn't relying on a bootloader exploit in old hardware to write a kernel.
- ianai 7y agoA better analogy is Microsoft word. The original source code was lost. It’s now relying on a reverse engineered code base from someone outside of Microsoft.
- tramtrist 7y agoIs this true? I've never heard this before.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bentcorner 7y ago"Original source code" is an imprecise term for a project that has been under development for decades. But your claim is verifiably false: https://computerhistory.org/blog/microsoft-word-for-windows-1-1a-source-code/ https://computerhistory.org/blog/microsoft-word-for-windows-...
- caspper69 7y agoPerhaps you are remembering this incident (which involved Equation Editor, a component of Office): https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-appears-to-have-lost-the-source-code-of-an-office-component/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-ap...
- asveikau 7y agoHe didn't have to. Which was a good thing. The commenter unironically using Orwellian phrasing like "be sure of the integrity of the device" shows how far we've come.
- derefr 7y ago> The commenter unironically using Orwellian phrasing like "be sure of the integrity of the device" shows how far we've come. You don't want to know that your phone hasn't had a rootkit installed on it by someone who borrowed it off your desk while you were in the office kitchen?
- saagarjha 7y agoYou would because the device would have restarted.
- asveikau 7y agoSo obviously the only way to avoid this is to give total control to Apple and Apple alone? Not, say, disable flashing if the passcode protected lock screen is up? I had a much more snarky answer before this one about how realistic this scenario is for most people, but I will keep it to myself.
- mindslight 7y agoI'd rather suffer the possibility of being pwnt than have devices that come pwnt out of the box. Manufacturers could develop systems that removed themselves from the trust chain, but unfortunately more control is beneficial in their view.
- dan-robertson 7y agoOne reason one might want this is because of the hacker spirit. It seems more interesting and impressive to do what something was deliberately designed to not do. Another reason is that Apple’s hardware tend to be very high quality. For example, on JavaScript benchmarks (which you may or may not consider to be a good proxy for general/single threaded performance), an iPhone7 performs comparably to the current latest Android phones. Also spare parts or replacements are easy to come by. I’m quite unconvinced that the boot loader exploit demonstrates that the platform is so insecure that you shouldn’t use it. If you want to run a different operating system on a typical android device you would either not need to circumvent such security measures (which doesn’t mean that they exist or work) or you would use some exploit that didn’t get such wide press.
- samatman 7y agoInteresting, I wonder how much of that is the fact that Apple has the only JS runtime which supports tail call elimination: https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/ https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/
- saagarjha 7y agoProbably very little. Apple's SoCs are far ahead of what is in most Android phones.
- londons_explore 7y ago"Ahead" isn't quite the right word. Making a large die area high performance ARM isn't hard. Its just very expensive, and only Apple has both the volume and margins to justify it.
- solarkraft 7y agoI remember the real reason being the optimization of an operation for array access that is relatively obscure, but heavily used by JS.
- 7y ago
- toast0 7y agoHow often do you boot your phone? My current phone gets a lot of booting because it doesn't always come back from sleeping, but a phone working properly maybe needs a reboot once a month? That would be less convenient if it needs to be tethered, but not that bad.
- snailmailman 7y agoI have an iPhone and I don't think I've purposefully rebooted it in months. I think the only time i see the boot logo is if the battery completely dies, or iOS updates. I guess an os thats not really supposed to be running might be less stable, but I would hope most OSes are stable enough to essentially never require reboots. (aside from power loss + updates)
- renewiltord 7y agoTo play with. I think I'd enjoy that. Also, the iPhones are cool hardware! And I've used unlocked bootloader devices before. My threat model allows for that exploit to be performed on me should someone desire it. The utility I gain exceeds the risk = f(likelihood, loss).
- tomc1985 7y agoWhere is your hacker spirit?
- stragies 7y agoTo use as local input/output devices in your home! A (old) phone/tablet running Linux connected via USB/ADB/Network can be used as: * (Additional) Webcam for your computer * (Additional) microphone/Touch-pad for your computer * (Additional) (status) screen for your computer/whatever_with_USB * Security-cam/Digital-picture-frame for your whatever_with_USB * (Additional) Network-available environmental sensors (light, temp, vibration). * (Additional) Wifi/xG Network (scanning) device for your PC If this doesn't make dozens of useful workflows available to you ... then I don't know, what you have been doing with computers before.