Kobo Firmware 4.11.12019

[issybird]

I'd like to ask that moderation be left to the moderators. Report a post and let us handle it. Moreover, once a post has been deleted here members should not be posting screenshots, as it rather obviates the point of deletion!

[k9reeder]

Originally Posted by issybird

I'd like to ask that moderation be left to the moderators. Report a post and let us handle it. Moreover, once a post has been deleted here members should not be posting screenshots, as it rather obviates the point of deletion!

Sorry, people seem to think I was being paranoid, when as you know, the attack occurred. I was simply defending my actions, and providing proof.

I did report the post, first thing.

[MGlitch]

Here’s the link to test this yourself from someone who posts here a lot

https://pgaskin.net/KoboStuff/kobofirmware.html

I can further verify that geek1011s tool finds this firmware.

This took all of a minute to test and verify independent of anything in this thread. And saves us all the needless accusations of potential malware which in this case are baseless.

[NiLuJe]

Of actual interest to tinkerers, but only tangentially related to this FW: the sources for the Forma kernel & bootloader have also been released a few hours ago.

[k9reeder]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Here’s the link to test this yourself from someone who posts here a lot

https://pgaskin.net/KoboStuff/kobofirmware.html

I can further verify that geek1011s tool finds this firmware.

This took all of a minute to test and verify independent of anything in this thread. And saves us all the needless accusations of potential malware which in this case are baseless.

Good job. I hope your rapid response will be of future benefit to the unwary. Also note please, there were no accusations. The thread, and most of my remaining posts in it, are still here to read.

[ICDeadPpl]

Clicking on the link for the different Kobo models (Mark 3 through 6) gives an error like this:
NoSuchKeydownload.s3.kobo.comtx0000000000000002d86 e3-005bfc644c-9c90334-iad39c90334-iad3-global

[gtim108]

Originally Posted by ICDeadPpl

Clicking on the link for the different Kobo models (Mark 3 through 6) gives an error like this:
NoSuchKeydownload.s3.kobo.comtx0000000000000002d86 e3-005bfc644c-9c90334-iad39c90334-iad3-global

This update is for Kobo Forma only (probably it could work for other Mark 7 devices)

[DNSB]

If anyone is feeling truly paranoid, you can try the download.kobobooks.com version of the download link. You do have to change the https to http to skip the security error since the certificate associated with that URL is a akamai wildcard cert.

download.kobobooks.com link for kobo-update-4.11.12019.zip

@gtim108 Please do not post the links for other hardware marks until you have actually tested to see if they work.

[gtim108]

Originally Posted by DNSB

If anyone is feeling truly paranoid, you can try the download.kobobooks.com version of the download link. You do have to change the https to http to skip the security error since the certificate associated with that URL is a akamai wildcard cert.

download.kobobooks.com link for kobo-update-4.11.12019.zip

@gtim108 Please do not post the links for other hardware marks until you have actually tested to see if they work.

I don't post any links. This text goes directly from the geek's web site. And it says the following: You can also try the generic links at your own risk

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by gtim108

I don't post any links. This text goes directly from the geek's web site. And it says the following: You can also try the generic links at your own risk

I'm very sad to inform you that you did post links. The first post in this thread contains the untested generic links that should have been tested before posting. It's easy enough to remove them.


Kobo Firmware 4.11.12019

Kobo firmware 4.11.12019 has been released. As of November 26, 2018, it has been released to the Kobo Forma. It has not been released to the Kobo Touch A/B, Kobo Touch C, Kobo Mini, Kobo Glo, Kobo Glo HD, Kobo Touch 2.0, Kobo Aura, Kobo Aura HD, Kobo Aura H2O, Kobo Aura H2O Edition 2 v1, Kobo Aura H2O Edition 2 v2, Kobo Aura ONE, Kobo Aura ONE Limited Edition, Kobo Aura Edition 2 v1, Kobo Aura Edition 2 v2, and the Kobo Clara HD. The affiliates used to check these firmware versions were: kobo, bestbuyca, fnac, beta, rakutenbooks, and the walmartca.


Download Links

Official Links:

• Kobo Forma (mark 7) - Download | Release Notes

Nonfunctioning generic links removed DNSB

Generated by kobofirmware by Patrick G (geek1011). Source Code

Easy-peasy.

[gtim108]

In this case the code from the geek's website will be tampered and people will complain that I changed the code, so links can't be trusted. I will just stop posting firmware notifications and will wait for geek himself to post...:-( :-)

[Stevex]

Working fine on my Aura One and Forma

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by gtim108

In this case the code from the geek's website will be tampered and people will complain that I changed the code, so links can't be trusted. I will just stop posting firmware notifications and will wait for geek himself to post...:-( :-)

Thanks for posting the release! I can confirm that it is real .

Regarding the other mark links, I should really put a note in to test the mark links before posting. Feel free to remove the broken other mark ones (most people usually already do). The reason why they are not automatically filtered out is that I can't do that from the firmware page due to CORS (all the checks are done client-side). As for the accusations of false links, recently we have been having issues with spam and fake links, so people are naturally a bit paranoid.

PS: I'll update the patches later this week (a bit later than usual), as I'm really busy right now.

[geek1011]

Ok. So I had a look at the patches, and found something really unusual. The disassembly (even the offsets) seems to be the exact same for this libnickel compared to the last, although the hash is different. It's really unbelievable. I'm going to try downloading the firmware again just to make sure.

[geek1011]

So I guess it is exactly the same. Proof:

patrick@dpc01:~/kp/12019$ arm-linux-gnueabihf-objdump -S libnickel.so.1.0.0 > libnickel-12019.dump
patrick@dpc01:~/kp/12019$ arm-linux-gnueabihf-objdump -S ../182/libnickel.so.1.0.0 > libnickel-182.dump
patrick@dpc01:~/kp/12019$ diff *.dump
2c2
< libnickel.so.1.0.0:     file format elf32-littlearm
---
> ../182/libnickel.so.1.0.0:     file format elf32-littlearm
patrick@dpc01:~/kp/12019$ strings libnickel.so.1.0.0 | grep 4.11.12019 -C4
/mnt/onboard/.kobo
3.12.1
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.0; en-us;) AppleWebKit/%1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/%1 (Kobo Touch %2/%3)
Mobile
4.11.12019
^(gif|fw|p2p|utun)\d+$
Bluetooth
[a-z0-9:]+
00000000000000000000000000000000
patrick@dpc01:~/kp/12019$ strings ../182/libnickel.so.1.0.0 | grep 4.11.11982 -C4
/mnt/onboard/.kobo
3.12.1
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.0; en-us;) AppleWebKit/%1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/%1 (Kobo Touch %2/%3)
Mobile
4.11.11982
^(gif|fw|p2p|utun)\d+$
Bluetooth
[a-z0-9:]+
00000000000000000000000000000000
patrick@dpc01:~/kp/12019$ sha256sum libnickel.so.1.0.0 ../182/libnickel.so.1.0.0 
8b53760cf51f9bc1e434e03d7114ba00fb378e752619a063c6e965a5d574c241  libnickel.so.1.0.0
b162d95e7788b21383448366a0d1208cd84bcaeb6aa791c69c3f14895dfb5121  ../182/libnickel.so.1.0.0
patrick@dpc01:~/kp/12019$ ls -lah
total 464M
drwxr-xr-x  3 patrick patrick 4.0K Nov 26 20:55 .
drwxr-xr-x 12 patrick patrick 4.0K Nov 26 20:07 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 patrick patrick 4.0K Nov 26 20:08 4.11.12019
-rwxrwxr-x  1 patrick patrick 269K Nov 19 19:44 libadobe.so
-rw-r--r--  1 patrick patrick 171M Nov 26 20:55 libnickel-12019.dump
-rw-r--r--  1 patrick patrick  95M Nov 26 20:38 libnickel-12019.hop
-rw-r--r--  1 patrick patrick 171M Nov 26 20:56 libnickel-182.dump
-rwxrwxr-x  1 patrick patrick  16M Nov 19 19:44 libnickel.so.1.0.0
-rwxrwxr-x  1 patrick patrick 7.5M Nov 19 19:44 librmsdk.so.1.0.0
-rwxrwxr-x  1 patrick patrick 5.1M Nov 19 19:44 nickel
-rwxrwxr-x  1 patrick patrick  27K Nov 19 19:44 sickel

Can someone please prove me wrong and tell me I missed something. Or that kobo did something funny (@davidfor?)? Something about this doesn't make sense...the build increased by 37, yet nothing changed about libnickel except the hash...?

If nobody finds anything, I'll release the (exact same!?!) patches tomorrow.

Edit: and what's more, the nickel CSS is identical too! The sums are different, but everything (the order, the contents) are exactly the same. This is really, really confusing. I hope and don't hope I've been barking up the wrong tree...

Edit 2: and guess what:

patrick@dpc01:~/kp/12019$ diff <(xxd ../182/libnickel.so.1.0.0) <(xxd libnickel.so.1.0.0)
17,18c17,18
< 00000100: 474e 5500 97ad a007 cfac 09e4 e492 c37c  GNU............|
< 00000110: 288c 2f25 1bed 33a0 f32f 0000 26bc 0000  (./%..3../..&...
---
> 00000100: 474e 5500 2841 af98 d989 b8b4 5565 cd7f  GNU.(A......Ue..
> 00000110: ce24 e2cc 968c 787c f32f 0000 26bc 0000  .$....x|./..&...
842127c842127
< 00cd98e0: 2e31 3139 3832 0000 4e41 0000 5e28 6769  .11982..NA..^(gi
---
> 00cd98e0: 2e31 3230 3139 0000 4e41 0000 5e28 6769  .12019..NA..^(gi
843092c843092
< 00cdd530: 4e6f 7620 2036 2032 3031 3800 4d4d 4d20  Nov  6 2018.MMM 
---
> 00cdd530: 4e6f 7620 3139 2032 3031 3800 4d4d 4d20  Nov 19 2018.MMM

Did they just use a hex editor to change the version?!? . Can @NiLuJe, @davidfor, @jackie_w, and @GeoffR take a look and see?

Edit 3: So I did a diff of the whole KoboRoot, and only the version numbers changed. In nickel, there are a few more changes, but they are inconsequential (the change is due to the zlib compression, and the decompressed version is identical). This is really crazy.

Edit 4: It seems like one of the kernel images (zImage-E80K00) differs slightly.

Edit 5: DNSB just confirmed that it was a hardware fix, which explains only the kernel differing.