10 replies to this topic

[mjs27541]

     Anyone who has been paying attention knows that Android has taken steps towards becoming more secure lately.  Its important for any OS to be as secure as possible, and with all of the stories of particularly nasty malware showing up on Android devices, we should all breathe a little easier knowing that Google is paying attention.  But, as is the way of all things, the increased security comes with a price, and the price Android users will be forced to pay for a more secure OS is even more difficulty, if not the outright impossibility, of obtaining root access on locked devices.  A new commit has been spotted in the AOSP source code which limits the ability of apps to write to /system outside of recovery mode. Now without getting into all the details of what this means (since I'd be blatantly plagiarizing anyway), this basically means that any apps that require the ability to write to /system will need to do so from within recovery (TWRP, CWM, etc. etc.).  Practically speaking, this means headaches, and lots of them, for app devs and users alike.  This commit may or may not show up in the 4.4.3 release of Android, but unless it is removed or altered, its practically guaranteed to be in the 4.5 (or 5.0) release that will follow it.  The writing for the future of stock root access on Android has been on the wall for quite some time, and its getting ever bolder.  Chainfire has done a far better job of explaining the implications of this than I ever could, in a G+ post you can find right

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Source:  Google+, thanks to livinginkaos for the tip!

[Thach]

I guess it was only a matter of time before things went this direction.

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[mjs27541]

Yep. Us so called power users are a small fraction of the overall picture. And I'm sure Google would love to get their hands on all the data that a few big enterprise contracts would get them.

[RikRong]

Yeah, it sucks for development, but it's good to see always increasing security.

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[SamuriHL]

What lesson can we extrapolate from this? Is there some kind of message here? Is it "since we've always found root exploits before even if no one is explicitly looking for one on our locked device we can just go on assuming that root will always be found despite the naysayers?" That must be it. Sent from my SM-P600 using Tapatalk

[Thach]

If I were to say there is an lesson here then to me it would be this. If you look back, you can see how things got tighter and tighter for the root community. Its been said by many whom normally achieve root for us that our time is dwindling short and we have to stop assuming that root will always be available to other than developer devices.
We have been lucky thus far when it comes to finding exploits to achieve root but its getting tougher and eventually may not even be possible. Enjoy the time that we have now because it could soon be gone.

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[SamuriHL]

If I were to say there is an lesson here then to me it would be this. If you look back, you can see how things got tighter and tighter for the root community. Its been said by many whom normally achieve root for us that our time is dwindling short and we have to stop assuming that root will always be available to other than developer devices.
We have been lucky thus far when it comes to finding exploits to achieve root but its getting tougher and eventually may not even be possible. Enjoy the time that we have now because it could soon be gone.

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Naysayer.

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[Thach]

Hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Lol

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[SamuriHL]

Or just buy an unlocked phone and prepare for the best. Lmao

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[Thach]

Or just buy an unlocked phone and prepare for the best. Lmao

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I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to go this route for now on. Gotta start saving up now. Motorola developer editions will be my choice.

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[SamuriHL]

It is the best way to go to ensure an open device. The money is well spent if you care about custom recovery and root. I actually agree that the proposed changes in aosp would benefit most users in terms of security. Traditional root may be changing but if it leads to more secure devices, so be it.

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