Motorola's Sholes Bootloader Unlocked

teh31337one writes "Motorola's locked bootloader for their Sholes-family devices (Droid OG, Milestone, DroidX, Droid 2 etc, not Atrix 4G) has finally been cracked. @nenolod explains on his website: The Motorola Sholes platform uses a trusted bootloader environment. Signatures are stored as part of the CDT stored on the NAND flash. mbmloader verifies the signature on mbm before passing control. mbm verifies all other signatures before allowing the device to boot. There is a vulnerability in the way that Motorola generated the signatures on the sections stored in the CDT. This vulnerability is very simple. Like on the PlayStation 3, Motorola forgot to add a random value to the signature in order to mask the private key. This allowed the private key and initialization vector to be cracked. This comes at the time when HTC are also stepping up their attempts at locking down their phones . The recently released LTE flagship — ThunderBolt is their most locked-down phone to date ... They made signed images, a signed kernel, and a signed recovery. They also locked the memory."

Re:Sorry, but no

[mwvdlee]

Which companies are NOT on the list?

Re:I'm not that technically knowledgeable*...

[thegrassyknowl]

I should have pasted the whole of section 4 of the LGPL, which also makes it clear that you must provide all information required for the user to reinstall the new shared library of their choice.

Re:Why do they do it?

[brandorf]

It's pretty much 100% 1 and 2. Both the carrier and manufacturer get kickback for shipping the phones with certain apps preloaded, and since they are part of the system image, unremovable without some extra work (rooting). Every Verizon android phone, for instance, comes with Amazon Kindle/MP3, Verizon's Navigator software, CityID, and Blockbuster pre-installed, and there's nothing you can do about it. In addition, things like usb tethering (not wifi) is supposed to be a standard feature for android as of 2.2, but is disabled in most phones. As far as planned obsolescence, while you can't directly prove it, one nice example is Sony Ericsson, which promised for months and months that it would upgrade its X10 line to the latest android, then finally said it was impossible for "technical reasons", then announced its new line of phones, which would launch with the latest version of android.

Wrong about HTC

[AliasMarlowe]

From TFS:

This comes at the time when HTC are also stepping up their attempts at locking down their phones . The recently released LTE flagship — ThunderBolt is their most locked-down phone to date.

The submitter should know that the HTC Thunderbolt is just a customized variant of the HTC Desire HD provided for Verizon. Locking it up is almost certainly a Verizon-demanded attribute, and not an initiative from HTC. The Desire HD is unlocked in most of the world, and I doubt if a locked version can be obtained in countries with a more enlightened phone system.