Episode 618 – Droid Rooting, Zipit Doom & USB Live Chrome OS
Hacking the Motorola Droid: Root Access! A Linux Doom source port on the Zipit, Booting and installing Chrome OS from USB, your WordPress picks and much more.
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Hacking the Motorola Droid: Root Access!
As expected the Motorola Droid has been rooted. That is to say there’s a hack that’ll unlock SU, or super user privileges on the phone. The hack is essentially su bundled in an unsigned update that can be run from the SD card. The unlocking process, which has changed since introduction, is outlined at this AllDroid.org forum thread.
At time of writing the process is to download this zip, rename it to update.zip and copy it to the root of your Droid’s SD card. Shutdown the Droid and start it by holding Power and X. Once greeted by an exclamation point on your screen hold the camera and volume+ buttons. From the menu choose the update.zip with the D-Pad, and once updated choose reboot.
Keep in mind that when it comes to unlocking moving targets like this it’s best to check with droid forums beforehand.
A Linux Doom Source Port
It was only a matter of time before we put Doom on The Zipit Z2. The recently unlocked linux-based wireless device is a prime candidate for fragging, what with it’s QVGA color display, WiFi and all. After unlocking, installing Doom is simply a matter or launching Fluxbox with startx and downloading PrBoom, a cross-platform Doom Source Port, with apt-get install prboom. The trick in launching PrBoom from /usr/games/ is to add the -width 320 -height 240 parameters. While PrBoom comes included with Freedoom, a free and open source Doom compatible IWAD, you may provide your own doom or Doom2-iwad parameter.
It is also worth noting that PrBoom comes with it’s own tcp game server for deathmatch. If anyone wants to try a little Zipit Z2 deathmatching hit us up. Or if you’re looking for some Doom goodness on the PC check out my favorite port, Skulltag.
Boot Chromium OS from USB
While still early in it’s development stages, Google’s upcoming Chrome OS is a neat OS to play with — especially on a netbook. While the Virtual Machine images floating around are nice for a glimpse, if you really want to immerse yourself in the Chrome OS experience it’s best to boot it from the metal. This can be achieved by “burning” this Chromium OS image to 3GB or greater USB or SD media. Here’s a torrent.
If you’re familiar with dd it’s simply a matter of downloading the torrent, unzipping and imaging the included chrome_os.img to your media. For example, dd if=’chrome_os.img’ of=/dev/sdb where /dev/sdb is the path of your removable media.
If you’re in Windows you’ll be delighted to find that the linked zip contains a copy of WinDD, as well as writing instructions. More information can be found at this makeuseof.com article. Important tidbits include the fact that the default user and password are chronos / password and that a terminal can be accessed by CTRL+ALT+T. Oh, and the xrandr command is available if your desired resolution isn’t detected automatically. The syntax is typically xrandr -s 1024×768 or similar.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Darren Kitchen, Iraklis Athanasakis. Iraklis Athanasakis said: RT @hak5darren: RT @Hak5 Episode 618 – Droid Rooting, Zipit Doom & USB Live Chrome OS http://bit.ly/7vma4K What do you think? [...]
Thanks! Superb episode ^^
[...] forget to visit Hak5! var addthis_pub = 'aex'; var addthis_language = 'en';var addthis_options = 'email, digg, [...]
@Darren wait till you gen all the android root utilities copied over, then android is unstoppable.
(rooted MyTouch3G with CyanogenMod FTW) why don’t you try and do what you are trying to do with a man in the middle attack with your droid. you can use wifi tether for root (http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/).
here is the man in the middle javascript keylogging framework
http://code.google.com/p/middler/
did you do something with the sound?
watching the episode now, thought a cat was in my rom.
Yeah, we recorded using different equipment and I wasn’t able to fix the audio in post. The stereo is swapped. It’ll be normal from now on.
that explains why im sitting with my headset the wrong way xD
As to quote aex “Thanks! Superb episode”
yes indeed it was perfectly superb. With this kind of content Hak5 is top of the class.
Great episode guys and keep it coming like this.
hats off and A+
~Ryonni
Great episode guys, and gal!
I highly recommend Artisteer. Its a pretty neat tool for beginners and advanced users. For beginners it bangs together a pretty good site theme really quickly while advanced users can crank out a framework and then modify it rather easily.
I’d be happy to loan my copy to ya if thats some how possible.
@Darren
I swapped my speakers round thinking that it was my fault!!
Hi, sorry if my question is repeating someone elses, but can anyone tell me if the zipit and android phones (mine is HTC Hero) are capable of doing packet injection, to you know to use them for wep cracking?
Yes.. I did doom on the zipit a while back..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Okogvz9UPUM
Just a note you guys may want to upgrade to a better version of z2mousemu
[make somethings much easier like draging windows ect..]
Aliosa27s site has them.
also I have managed to get almost 6 hours of running time out of a zipit if you set up some power management.
turn down [or off] the kb lights, turn the screen down 1/2 way, and turn the on-board speaker off. [use alsamixer for that]
Heres a quick list of apps That I have found work nicely on the zipit.
Screen – multitask from the command line.
Alpine – email client that will work
Pidgin – works in x but screen size is an issue so has to be setup on another system.
Finch – the console version of pidgin [requires pidgin] – works much better you can actually configure it on the zipit.
mplayer – works and can play back video! even in FB mode [no x needed if you set the command string right]
htop – see the processes!
cmuse – good console music / mp3 / internet radio player
mc-midnight commander – console file browser
nano – console file editer
leafpad – x windows file manager
links2 – web browser use -g for graphics
Dillo – also works though window is a bit small. helps to remove as many toolbar as you can.
fceu – nes emulator runs under X use string: ./fceu –opengl 0 –sound 0 –xscale 1 –yscale 1 romname.zip
I hope you guys keep up the good work!
please post the text on how you altered mac addresses!
Any chance you’ll be showing how to root an iPhone? Great show by the way, always look forward to the shows.
Do you think you will be able to do ssh tunelling with a rooted Droid?
Some time before, I really needed to buy a good car for my firm but I didn’t have enough cash and could not buy something. Thank God my father suggested to get the loan from banks. Thus, I did that and used to be happy with my small business loan.
Hi, sorry if my question is repeating someone elses, but can anyone tell me if the zipit and android phones (mine is HTC Hero) are capable of doing packet injection, to you know to use them for wep cracking. Thank you very nice article..