Zygote trickery -- 743C 27C3 release

The Gingerbread source has recently been released and
a root vulnerability has been fixed inside the
zygote/dalvik framework (if you dont know what it is,
call it a framework). I hoped that this exploit would
still work on Gingerbread, but since the bug is too
similar to the adb issue it has been fixed as well.
Thus, this only affects android phones < 2.3 but
it also works without debugging being enabled e.g.
from inside an evil app.


As always: the code is AS IS.
If you use it, it may crash your
device and makes it totally useless, SO YOU USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK! THERE IS NO GUARANTEE
THAT IT WILL WORK AT ALL.


If you dont know what jailbreaking is about, dont do it anyways.
Once executed it should create a /system/bin/rootshell or
+s /system/bin/sh.


The apk can be found here. Nevermind the simple GUI,
it was pasted together from various sample/demo programs
just to make it easier to have an activity to start
for zygote.


And fear my publishing skillz! :D

The bootdisk and the rootdisk

The recent discussion at the pub was of course about
the bits and bytes but this time with view on historical
facts. Someone remembers the bootdisk and the rootdisk?
When it was not possible to boot from CD-ROM it was
necessary to dd a bootdisk and a rootdisk image to floppy
disks. After a few installs, one of them was always fscked.
So why were we using Linux at all? Wasn't it a funny time
with TurboPascal at school? Or even better with BorlandC++
which I got hands on in '94 or so on a low-price
(b/c outdated-)version. For a price of just 80 DM
which was still high enough at that time one also got the incredible TurboDebugger and there the fun starts.

While I am not going to explain for what reason exactly
TurboDebugger was cool (I know the even more cool guys
used SoftIce :) it showed you the hard way why
RealMode really sucked in particular if there is a ProtectedMode
since years. So isnt there any good OS utilizing that?
Whats this "Linux" ...?

Gingerbread

If someone already has got a Gingerbread and wants to

save the world, let me know.