This week, various geek hearts have been a-flutter about the hack found that allows one to telnet into a T-Mobile G1 and get some semblance of root access. This follows a couple of weeks of grousing on the Android Google Groups about the lack of root access, as if root access were some magic elixir that makes things “open”.
It looks like the hack in question will get closed off in a future OTA update, leaving these poor people uprooted…for which I am truly grateful, for both tactical and strategic reasons.
Tactically, it represents a security hole big enough to drive a truck through. While it looks like an eight-step process, that could all readily be automated, even to the point of sending out the phone’s IP address to data thieves so they could slurp down data to their heart’s content for those devices with publicly-reachable addresses.
Strategically, I am hoping that some people will take this opportunity to solve their problems in more constructive fashions, beyond merely helping find holes in the Android security armor.
For example, take device backup and restore functionality. Android does not have this today, and their security model is too good for an ordinary Android application to be able add this capability. I think everyone can agree that being able to back up one’s device and restore it later is A Very Good Thing. However, the attitude of some is that the problem is lack of root access – if one could run an application as root, one could back up and restore with impunity.
Ignoring the fact that, technically, this approach might not even work, their “solution” helps next to nobody. For perfectly valid security reasons, Google and OHA will be striving to block any means by which one could get root access. So, at most, it will help a few hackers for a short period of time.
The real solution is to get hooks into the Android internals itself that support backup and restore. This could be an actual backup and restore application baked into the OS, or possibly some form of API (e.g., a backup API makes an encrypted blob of data available to applications with an appropriate user permission). This solution can benefit all Android users, no matter what the user’s technical skills are. And, implemented properly, it could be written in a manner that does not compromise security.
Now, implementing this may be more troublesome than hacking root access, simply because it’s a collaborative effort and requires understanding of Android internals that are not well-known to many. The fact that you can’t even upload your own changes to your G1 (yet) definitely sucks and, in many ways, is a bigger “open” issue than root access. You’re also likely to get fewer cries of “w00t” from fellow device hackers. On the other hand, it could be lucrative (implement an API in the open source Android OS and write a top-notch backup application using that API). And it could benefit millions, not dozens or hundreds.
