Kindle Jail Breaking

[knc1]

Touchscreen Kindle owners (other than KT (K5) and PW-1, your safe from change):

If there is any possible chance that you might want to use any of our add-ins, now or in the future, you must jailbreak your device before it updates to firmware version 5.8.8

Our jailbreak does not effect the operation of your Kindle in any way.
It only enables the Kindle to install packages signed with our signature certificate in addition to Amazon's certificate.

The chance of there ever being a jail break for firmware 5.8.8 or newer is somewhere between slim and none.

[Pajamaman]

Originally Posted by knc1

The chance of there ever being a jail break for firmware 5.8.8 or newer is somewhere between slim and none.

Why do you think that?

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

Why do you think that?

Because I am the only person left with the background regularly active here and at 72 years old, not thinking well enough to figure out the problem(s).

That is also why you only see me posting repeats of things previously posted (nothing new) for people who could not find the answers.

[Pajamaman]

I thought you were referring to some technical barrier to jail-breaking. The jail-break prior to the last version was created by someone other than yourself. Someone else may produce another jail-break. The Kindle has a huge user-base and I would be surprised if no one else produced another jail-break if there is no new technical barrier that would exclude it.

[JSWolf]

It could also be that whatever holes were in the firmware prior to 5.8.8 have been filled in and there is no way to jailbreak.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

I thought you were referring to some technical barrier to jail-breaking. The jail-break prior to the last version was created by someone other than yourself. Someone else may produce another jail-break. The Kindle has a huge user-base and I would be surprised if no one else produced another jail-break if there is no new technical barrier that would exclude it.

True.
But also true:
ALL prior jailbreaks where created by someone else.

Also true:
In the past, some of the assistance was from people who never became a member of this site.
People working "in the trade" for some very big name companies who provided assistance for their own reasons.

The Amazon attitude that they own the behavior of a device that is sold rather than leased is a very significant position for a device vendor to take.
Not everyone "in the trade" agrees with it or supports it.

I excluded "leased" because who does what to whom is a contractual matter.
That is, the terms are between the parties to the contract.
Even when it is a single payment, unlimited term, contract.

Before someone needs to ask -
"in the trade" - being the production of embedded system consumer devices.

I.E:
Who is in charge of your television set or other devices? You or the vendor?
Where is the line drawn and who will be the one to draw it?
All three (?) O.T. for this thread, start another one on those topics if you wish.

[encol]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It could also be that whatever holes were in the firmware prior to 5.8.8 have been filled in and there is no way to jailbreak.

Not necessarily this have to be done by one single person. We can share our efforts here.
Any chance to discover what are this "holes"?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by encol

Not necessarily this have to be done by one single person. We can share our efforts here.
Any chance to discover what are this "holes"?

If the holes are filled, then there are no holes. The hole used to jailbreak previously has been filled.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by encol

Not necessarily this have to be done by one single person. We can share our efforts here.
Any chance to discover what are this "holes"?

Yes, brute force, read everything in the system image that is readable.

You don't even need a Kindle, just any ol' Linux system will do, a copy of an Amazon update package, and a copy of KindleTool.

Extract rootfs.img from the update package, mount, start reading.

Don't post here about what you find that Lab126 has done wrong this time - they are following the posts here.

[Pajamaman]

I guess there comes a point when there are NO ways to jb. Maybe we're reaching that point. Shame for Kindle users. I guess they'll have to buy Kobos if they want to customize.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

I guess there comes a point when there are NO ways to jb. Maybe we're reaching that point. Shame for Kindle users. I guess they'll have to buy Kobos if they want to customize.

There is always a chance that someone now unknown to us will take up the challenge and provide us with the answer.

This forum does get a lot of readership from people of all backgrounds.

I think the best we can do is get the word out to jb before getting caught by an OTA update.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

I guess there comes a point when there are NO ways to jb. Maybe we're reaching that point.

Anyone who looks at the continuous stream of security holes in any modern computer software would find that very, very unlikely. I hope it's true, though, since it would also mean that all my other Linux boxes would be much more secure than they actually are. (But it's not true. Has Amazon even patched CVE-2016-5195 yet? Yeah, I know, the problem on Kindles is different, getting them to execute user-specified code under any uid whatsoever -- but still.)

[knc1]

I did not intend to say that it might be impossible.

Just that we have lost a lot of the "old time, skilled labor" here that it takes to get the job done.
At the present time, we don't even have people with the skill set(s) that it takes to maintain what we do have.
Some of the "old timers" are still responding to personal e-mails, but that is mostly just a source of ideas.

It is a fairly large system that either takes a lot of eyes or a lot of luck to spot a system error.
Right now, it seems like it will have to be a new set of eyes.

[theol0403]

Hello, did amazon stop the data.tar.gz described here from running a RUNME.sh file on the home partition? This could be used to jailbreak. It worked in my pw3 (already jailbreaked and 5.8.7) for exiting out of diags

[knc1]

Originally Posted by theol0403

Hello, did amazon stop the data.tar.gz described here from running a RUNME.sh file on the home partition? This could be used to jailbreak. It worked in my pw3 (already jailbreaked and 5.8.7) for exiting out of diags

A long time ago they started marking USB visible storage as "no_exec".
Changing that is one of the things the jail break installation does.

Also, nearly as long ago, anything executing from USB visible storage is being run by the user: "framework" rather than by: "root".

Relatively recently, Lab126 has moved a lot of things into a chroot.
(They haven't gotten that correct yet, but we have to assume they will, someday.)