Just in case there weren’t enough reasons to stay clear of the G1, it appears there’s an issue with security and root level access to the Linux kernel.
Rumour mill has hit overdrive of late, with an issue over privileged access to the operating system’s core being exposed.
Google has put out a fix for this issue, along with another that’s worried customers.
It’s come to light that users were given top-level administrator privileges automatically on their G1, where any text entered could be read by Android as a system command.
It just gets funnier and funnier.
This issue was apparently picked up when a random user entered in the word ‘reboot’ into an SMS, where the phone promptly acted by shutting down and then restarting.
If anyone out there can corroborate this, it would be of interest.
Another issue came to light of late *sigh* over the browser’s weakness, where some websites that have been deliberately built around damaging code could take over control of the browser.
Both of these have been resolved with the latest updates and really only affected early shipping code, which are most all of the handsets so we’ve heard.
It is reassuring to know that besides man being fallible, Google is too.
It doesn't do it on the stock UK version!
It does on mine! What firmware version are you on? AFAIK there isn't a fixed UK firmware yet…
Try doing a cold boot on the phone and making sure you hit return both before and after typing reboot.
A simple fix is to type “cat” (again surrounded by returns) to send all the user input to a less harmful location than /bin/sh 😉
Interesting, I'm sure I tried that when I first heard about the bug but you're right! it does!
This only affects v29 firmware which was never shipped here.
Yeh, coz the iBone was perfect when it came out…
The iphone has the odd distinction of having been a lot closer to perfection when it was launched than it is now. anyway, none of the iphone bugs were due to such blatent stupidity!!
indeed i wonder what happens if you type
<return> rm -rf ./* <return>
on teh plus side on showing them the reboot bug they agreed to take it a return
which they dont do on upgrades
Yeh, coz the iBone was perfect when it came out…
The iphone has the odd distinction of having been a lot closer to perfection when it was launched than it is now. anyway, none of the iphone bugs were due to such blatent stupidity!!
indeed i wonder what happens if you type
<return> rm -rf ./* <return>
on teh plus side on showing them the reboot bug they agreed to take it a return
which they dont do on upgrades
It doesn't do it on the stock UK version!
It does on mine! What firmware version are you on? AFAIK there isn't a fixed UK firmware yet…
Try doing a cold boot on the phone and making sure you hit return both before and after typing reboot.
A simple fix is to type “cat” (again surrounded by returns) to send all the user input to a less harmful location than /bin/sh 😉
Interesting, I'm sure I tried that when I first heard about the bug but you're right! it does!
Yes it does, Elliott our developer at Carsonified insisted on seeing if he could get mine to do it yesterday and succeeded. If you start typing straight from the home screen it will do it. Currently it is open to an Android shell commands such as telnetd which allowed Elliott to make a call via remote access from the command line of his macbook. I will be updating my G1 to see if it shuts him out.
Yeh, coz the iBone was perfect when it came out…
The iphone has the odd distinction of having been a lot closer to perfection when it was launched than it is now. anyway, none of the iphone bugs were due to such blatent stupidity!!
indeed i wonder what happens if you type
<return> rm -rf ./* <return>
on teh plus side on showing them the reboot bug they agreed to take it a return
which they dont do on upgrades