Hacking for Private Pleasure?

...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!

'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 ???

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?

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/features/item/Might_an_empty_Vase_be_better_than_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.

@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 !?

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. 😮

UIQ3 has also been hacked...

http://www.uiqblog.com/2008/03/27/access-uiq3-private-folderseven-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.

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.

"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.

Hardeep1singh wrote: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. 😮

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

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/myths-hacking-viruses-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.

slitchfield wrote:"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).

Sure, the platform needs to be open, but not too open. Because it then leads to the disaster (ie-viruses). Like Lord Buddha said medium is the best. Steve, please don't change your views. After reading on apps, my mind got changed too, but it is not the right thing. I mean there's a proper way if they want to open the platform. There are two mistakes on this whole problem, if we look from a "wide angle"
1. They should have used a word other than hacking
2. Mistakes of Symbian Signed - If the process was much more simple and efficient, while still being strong at security, none of these problems will exist.

Symbian Signed and SymbianOS Platform Security are two completely separate things with only an artificial relation to each other.

Platform security is the security model that lets "someone" define which services need protection and which applications can access which protected services. This is what protects you from viruses etc. Every good OS needs a security model. Your data needs protecting. Your OS needs protection from outsiders hacking it. It's not inherently evil.

Symbian signed is the control model that makes Symbian and the device manufacturers the "someone" in the above security model. It's about controlling what you can do with your phone that you paid for. It is about restricting your freedom to do what you want with your property. It *is* inherently evil.

So the relationship between the two is a power relationship. Symbian is exercising their power over you under the false guise of protecting you, when in reality the someone in the security model could just as well be you (and is you in just about every other OS out there).

I think advice for "end users" to avoid trying to bypass these security measures is a little unnessicary. The kind of people who are able to do this already know enough not to need to be warned... its a little like printng health warnings on Challenger Tank.
I also think you may have underestimated the usefulness of such severe geekery. Unlimited acces to system folders give us the chance to easily install new items into the boot chain... things such as a Linux kernel.
While this is all years away in terms of what could actually be useful, there is still some promise here.

I don't know if this is even possible, but if it is...

Maybe this is for the best because maybe now the *community* can cook custom ROMs for the older phones that Nokia has abandoned and dumped by the roadside. Imagine being able to get FP2 on the N80 or the E50...

Same goes for SE phones...people can now make some decent firmware for P990, M600 W950

Nice Idea, One copy of S60v3 firmware for my N70 please 😃

This I call an innovative argument: These hacks are good because now hackers can start working on "decent" new firmware versions for some SE phones.

Amazing, those hackers today. Yep, that's what they will do, work on new firmware versions.

Consider me convinced...

rbrunner wrote:This I call an innovative argument: These hacks are good because now hackers can start working on "decent" new firmware versions for some SE phones.

Amazing, those hackers today. Yep, that's what they will do, work on new firmware versions.

Consider me convinced...

Believe it when I see it 😉

RBrunner: Yeah, and they will also bring back eternal life and free beer, that Symbian took from us 😊 Well, those nice hackers just widened the door for all the funny guys out there, that is software pirates and virus writers.

First of all, products which advertise themselves as "secure" are taking shit and deserve everything they gett. You can maybe describe a system as being more secure if you have a validated heuristic for defining the direction which is being travelled on a "secure" curve.
No product is immune from a disenchanted or mischievous employee - security has a technology and a human component (it's not possible to remove one or the other).

We have had what, 9 years of symbian mobile phones where anyone could download a program which which spam SMSs, wipe contacts etc.
One of the biggest problems within that time was a bug in the SMS stack which allowed a phone to be nuked simply by sending a corrupted SMS message (the sms stack asserted, panicing a system thread which forcess a reboot). With a system composed of millions of lines of code, you have to assume that the problems are not only rife, but virtually undetectable.

'Ethical' Hacking culture has evlolved to provide a useful service (as well as a wonderfully addictive puzzle) to the practitioner. A published hack is valuable - beacuse it can be fixed. A hidden hack can be exploited and even sold on the black market.

So anyeone who says "keep their hacks to themselves" need to think about this statement a little longer to follow through to the obvious conciquence.

Open systems are far more expensive than closed systems, and it has become apparent that open systems need a different approach to firmware update. FOTA has been on the cards for many years now, but is not that pervasive.
One of the problems is that even a small fix to the firmware to fix a security hole could introduce countless regressions. THis means that as S60 grows, so does the effort to change and validate each increment.

Luckily nokia are being smart. THey are releasing features to early adopters in the N95 (people who are willing to update their phones) - features which may have initially been prept for the N96. By the time N96 hits the shop, the quality , reliablity should have a maturity for a post 3 month release firmware rather than the pile of horse shit that often gets shovled into the first run of a mobile phone these days (not just nokia, but the industry).

Those firmware upgrades will contain securty patches but are released to far too little of the population to guarantee a plug in a security hole. Malicious software howver, needs to go through Symbian signed - so going back to original issue.

I know that security will continue to worry more in the future. BUt what worries me right now is my phone crashing due to unreliable software.

There's a scene in the sitcom Father Ted where this rather strange fellow comes to visit and says "Look, this book shelf is practically falling apart!" before hitting it to demonstrate.

The bookshelf doesn't fall apart, so he hits it again and again and again until it does break, then just acts as though he was doing Ted a favour by letting him know the bookshelf was weak.

At what point does hacking cease to be a useful public service and become like Ted's furniture-destroying "friend"? I think this is the question hackers need to answer when defending their hobby, because it's the question which worries outsiders the most.

How many potentially malicious hacks would have remained undiscovered without the help of hobbyist hackers? If there are any, then hobbyists ARE causing unnecessary damage, whatever they might say about helping security. Or do they want us all to use cast-iron bookcases?

I really don't understand why all of you are worried about viruses. If someone wants access to the system files on their phone then they're surely no newb to S60. I remember when I was using my 6680 for about 12 months, how many times did I get a virus? None.

If you're stupid enough to accept an installation file from an unknown bluetooth device, you deserve it.

The many thousands of people who have performed this hack know what they're doing, so WHY ARE YOU COMPLAINING ABOUT VIRUSES?

I don't care if you leave your phone caged up forever, just don't come out trying to say it's a bad thing to 'release the beast' when it certainly isn't.

rbrunner wrote:This I call an innovative argument: These hacks are good because now hackers can start working on "decent" new firmware versions for some SE phones.

Amazing, those hackers today. Yep, that's what they will do, work on new firmware versions.

Why not? In the WM world it's a point of pride to brew the best custom ROM. There are literally dozens of ROMs for most specific phone models. The community support for those phones is amazing, and lord knows that Nokia ditches about half of their S60 phones after a firmware update or two.

Not that S60 is as open as WM anymore, but maybe this hack it can catch up.

in review of samsung 550 today someone mentioned that Nokia n series apps did not install. Maybe they will one day.

isnt anyone as interested as myself in custom active standby screens? couldnt this now allow us to add an E series inbox to our n95 main screen? or a second row of active standby apps? this is what i want to see.