Hacking for Private Pleasure?

[slitchfield]

No, not that sort of pleasure. We're talking geek pleasure. I respond (hopefully with a voice of reason) to the S60 3rd Edition hackers over at Symbian Freak and to the hyped headlines that have started to appear around the world. And if you've no idea what I'm talking about, just move on, you're not missing much.

Read on in the full article.

[Richard Ross]

...our brothers and sisters at Symbian Freak are out there stickin' it to the man while you exhort us all to bend over for the military-industrial complex.

Shame on you, maaan, you're harshing our buzz!

[eletrix]

'windows mobile hacked' doesn't have the same ring of surprise ???

you mean that what have been done with symbian S60V3 (see system file + all permissions)
have already been done with windows mobile 6.0 ???
or in windows mobile you see these system files from the beginning like in symbian OS 6.1-8.1 ???

[kflyer]

Linked from http://mobileroyale.tk

Mr. Richard, if it's their hobby, why don't they keep it to themselves without putting lives of other Symbian users into danger? Do you call it a charity or a crime?

[Hardeep1singh]

Mr. Richard, if it's their hobby, why don't they keep it to themselves without putting lives of other Symbian users into danger? Do you call it a charity or a crime?

Lives of other Symbian users into Danger? Are you serious???

I remember an article written by Steve Litchfield a month ago, http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/featu...a_full_N96.php, it talks about a button named 'Are you Steve Litchfield?', this hacking initiative wants just that. Hope it brings Nokia's attention towards the fact that S60 became successful because it 'used to' be Open and that's something users really want. May be that's the only reason why N70 still sells.

By the way, Read the instructions over at symbian-freak, a noob can't even understand it, so he's still out of danger.

[slitchfield]

@Richard: you missed the smiley off 8-)

@eletrix: I was mainly talking about people's expectations that Windows in all its forms is errr... hacked quite often. It's not exactly news. And yes, WinMob is a LOT less secure than Symbian OS 9

@kflyer: Hmm..... don't go over-dramatic in the *other* direction, please!

@hardeep: S60 *is* very open. It's only that the problems with the Symbian Signed programme over the last year that led to the whole unsigned app phenomenon and (indirectly) drove hackers to fiddle even deeper. Personally, I'd much rather wait until official Open Signed versions of things like RotateMe come along rather than waste hours of precious family time locked away in my study fiddling with utilities...

Is it really you Steve!?!??? Just curious?

This is a little bit weird article Steve, you see, if I remember right you have covered and appraise some of the hacks that appeared in the past on Symbian Freak and I just can’t realize why you suddenly changed your opinion radically. What is different between this hack and hacks that you wrote about before with approbation?

Speaking about the hack I tend to disagree with you, S60 is now hacked, totally, it is not a temporary solution, now you can hack it without PC on demand or permanently give the allfiles attributes to certain applications. Also it is not as dangerous as you said; it is the quite simple procedure that can be done in a few minutes and there is no real danger for the end users. Of course I am talking about so called power users, not about aliens in the Smartphone world that buying S60 phones just because of the price and amount of megapixels!! This si not aimed for the “regular” users and regular users aren’t affected as they’ll newer now that there is a hack that allows full system access, actually most of them don’t even know what the hacking is what the full system access means so you shouldn’t worry about that much.

To sum up, the only shameless thing in whole story is fact that we have to hack our phones to get the unlimited access and to change the trivial thing op logo for example !?

[Hardeep1singh]

Flash News: The Process has been improved, now a phone has to be hacked on PC only once, after that you just need to run an app on phone on every restart.

[ares]

UIQ3 has also been hacked...

http://www.uiqblog.com/2008/03/27/ac...en-on-c-drive/

I totally agree with you Steve, and join my voice with yours. I despise these "hacked" red alerts that go on every now and then, because every single normob I see that reads a blog/site once in a while, comes running to me and asks me if they should buy an AntiVirus and which one I would recommend. I also despise it, because I have never seen good things come out of hacking, and I think being able to have access to the private folders is one step closer to having the possibility of fiddling with malware for the platform. I know we're a long long way from seeing the first S60 3rd virus, but we're getting there, in small steps.
I also agree that I'd rather wait for the application to have an Open Signed UID, than fiddle with my device this much to get it there.

[Solnyshok]

Hardeep1singh, please be so kind to throw a link at me here or in PM.

On a sidenote, this article at AAS looks more like a foundation to a anti-hack PR damage control that Nokia will start shortly, trying to calm down unexperienced users. And all those articles will link to the professional opinion at AAS... Whatever, if this utility will weigh below 100k and autostart on my phone, it will allow for easier installation of free software. Which is good (IMHO) for the masses.

[slitchfield]

"it will allow for easier installation of free software. Which is good (IMHO) for the masses."

Whoa there. There's already a flourishing freeware scene for S60, with no need for hackery. What you mean is that the latest hacks will let ultra-geeks fiddle with unchecked and possibly dangerous low-level utilities.

*Totally* different things.

Originally Posted by Hardeep1singh

Flash News: The Process has been improved, now a phone has to be hacked on PC only once, after that you just need to run an app on phone on every restart.

That's what I am talking about in the post above yours

Originally Posted by Solnyshok

Hardeep1singh, please be so kind to throw a link at me here or in PM.

http://www.symbian-freak.com/forum/v...ic.php?t=18004
http://www.symbian-freak.com/forum/v...ic.php?t=17997

Teo

I completely agree with you on this. In fact it made me write a post of my own!
http://thesymbianblog.com/2008/03/28...iruses-on-s60/

I really do appreciate the work over at SF to break the caged directories and make S60 more open, what I'm afraid of is the word 'hacking' making people paranoid enough to start buying AV apps, which add bloat, burden the processor, occupy precious RAM and drain battery.

[bartmanekul]

Originally Posted by slitchfield

"it will allow for easier installation of free software. Which is good (IMHO) for the masses."

Whoa there. There's already a flourishing freeware scene for S60, with no need for hackery. What you mean is that the latest hacks will let ultra-geeks fiddle with unchecked and possibly dangerous low-level utilities.

*Totally* different things.

Slightly OT, but I have changed my view in light of recent posts on that.

There really isnt that much you can do if the platform was open, and as long as SS keep signing things at a reasonable pace, I think its a good thing.

There was various angry posts from people, which almost always ended up due to them not being able to sign a bit of pirated software.

Im wondering, if anyone can give me good solid reasons for opening up S60? As far as I have seen so far, its just been cosmetic (removing icons, changing colours etc).