Re:Why Google Did Android
by monktastic1 on Monday February 10, 2020 @11:34AM
(#22290607)
Wait, how did this work? Surely not every typed word was issued as a command.
That was indeed the case. A better use for it was running "telnetd" which was how we got root access to the device initially.
Re:Why Google Did Android
by scintill76 on Monday February 10, 2020 @11:55AM
(#22290834)
I think it was more like every keystroke was sent to a virtual terminal as well as the GUI, so <enter>reboot<enter> would reboot.
Every typed word between two CRs.
Re:Why Google Did Android
by practical_lem on Monday February 10, 2020 @11:55AM
(#22290831)
Source? I could understand (!) `reboot` (with backticks) evaluated by mistake inside a shell script; but still reboot needs high privileges.
Re:Why Google Did Android
by ChrisClark on Monday February 10, 2020 @12:54PM
(#22291441)
Yeah, it ran everything you typed as root.
So open up a chat app, type return, reboot, return. Tada.
I can't find some original sources, but there is a summary I found on Slashdot. https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/08/11/08/1720246/bug-in-an...
Apparently everything you typed was executed in a terminal, so if you typed "reboot" anywhere, including in a chat window, it would reboot your device.