Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kindle Touch jail broken via ID3 Tag

yifan.lu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 36 posts

Re: Kindle Touch jail broken via ID3 Tag

#11

Post by raphman »

Genmutant wrote: post #5
dsr_ wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear that Amazon did think about XSS -- in the context of the browser. The debugCmd isn't available there. It's also clear that tney didn't think about all the other potential interactions with the system. It's not the things you don't know that bite you -- it's the thing you know that isn't so.

I don't think Amazon has that much of a problem with the jailbreaks. I can't see how they would loose any money with it, and who uses them, knows that he can potentially brick the device.

I guess, this would mean that a user can remove the ads from the ad-supported Kindle and save $40. This would mean that Amazon loses almost 30% in revenue each time they sell a Kindle Touch that is to be jailbroken.

Re: Kindle Touch jail broken via ID3 Tag

#12

Post by tspiteri »

non123 wrote: post #10
tspiteri wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I see it, Amazon does have an interest in users not jailbreaking or bricking devices. They sell the devices at around cost to sell content. If a user jailbreaks a device, Amazon loses the tight control on where the content comes from, and if a user bricks a device, Amazon sells no content for that device at all.

Have you ever used a Kindle? You can put any book on it that is either PDF, mobi and a few other formats.

Yes, I do use a Kindle. All content I read on it was from Amazon. I know I can get content from somewhere else, but it will never be as convenient as getting it from Amazon.

Re: Kindle Touch jail broken via ID3 Tag

#13

Post by slig »

tspiteri wrote: post #12
non123 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever used a Kindle? You can put any book on it that is either PDF, mobi and a few other formats.

Yes, I do use a Kindle. All content I read on it was from Amazon. I know I can get content from somewhere else, but it will never be as convenient as getting it from Amazon.

It's almost as convenient. You just have to download the file, and email it at your @(free.)kindle.com address. No cables, no big and heavy Java app to do file conversion, nothing.

Re: Kindle Touch jail broken via ID3 Tag

#14

Post by ckorhonen »

raphman wrote: post #11
Genmutant wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Amazon has that much of a problem with the jailbreaks. I can't see how they would loose any money with it, and who uses them, knows that he can potentially brick the device.

I guess, this would mean that a user can remove the ads from the ad-supported Kindle and save $40. This would mean that Amazon loses almost 30% in revenue each time they sell a Kindle Touch that is to be jailbroken.

I suspect the vast majority of customers don't care about the ads, and wouldn't expect them to pay to remove them in the first place.

As far as ad-supported services go, the Kindle is actually quite good - totally unobtrusive, and you actually get some good offers, things like $5 off a $10 purchase.

Re: Kindle Touch jail broken via ID3 Tag

#15

Post by djb_hackernews »

hmottestad wrote: post #4

That's great. As a summary: This guy found out that most of the GUI is HTML and Javascript. Some of the JS functions are mapped to OS calls, including one that will run any script as root (nativeBridge.dbgCmd();). This function is disabled in the browser, so it needs to be called from somewhere else. So he injects the function call into the ID3 tag of an MP3 file and plays the file on the native mp3 player which has…

And this is the "payload":

Press to Jailbreak!

Re: Kindle Touch jail broken via ID3 Tag

#16

Post by burgerbrain »

raphman wrote: post #11
Genmutant wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Amazon has that much of a problem with the jailbreaks. I can't see how they would loose any money with it, and who uses them, knows that he can potentially brick the device.

I guess, this would mean that a user can remove the ads from the ad-supported Kindle and save $40. This would mean that Amazon loses almost 30% in revenue each time they sell a Kindle Touch that is to be jailbroken.

Although the other "special offer" kindles have been jailbroken for some time, the kindle hacking community seems to be doing a good job of refusing to (at least for the relative layman) disable advertisements on them or enable any sort of tethering over 3g.

Re: Kindle Touch jail broken via ID3 Tag

#17

Post by burgerbrain »

tspiteri wrote: post #12
non123 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever used a Kindle? You can put any book on it that is either PDF, mobi and a few other formats.

Yes, I do use a Kindle. All content I read on it was from Amazon. I know I can get content from somewhere else, but it will never be as convenient as getting it from Amazon.

You or others may be interested in the "Magic Catalog" for Project Gutenberg. It's basically an ebook that you put onto your kindle that is a catalog of all the books on Project Gutenberg. You select any that you want and it automagically grabs them for you.

After the initial effort investment (not that hard, since you can download it with the kindle's browser), I would say it's actually easier.

Re: Kindle Touch jail broken via ID3 Tag

#18

Post by tspiteri »

burgerbrain wrote: post #17
tspiteri wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do use a Kindle. All content I read on it was from Amazon. I know I can get content from somewhere else, but it will never be as convenient as getting it from Amazon.

You or others may be interested in the "Magic Catalog" for Project Gutenberg. It's basically an ebook that you put onto your kindle that is a catalog of all the books on Project Gutenberg. You select any that you want and it automagically grabs them for you. After the initial effort investment (not that hard, since you can download it with the kindle's browser), I would say it's actually easier.

Thank you. That is indeed a nice way to get Project Gutenberg books.

Re: Kindle Touch jail broken via ID3 Tag

#19

Post by notatoad »

Genmutant wrote: post #5
dsr_ wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear that Amazon did think about XSS -- in the context of the browser. The debugCmd isn't available there. It's also clear that tney didn't think about all the other potential interactions with the system. It's not the things you don't know that bite you -- it's the thing you know that isn't so.

I don't think Amazon has that much of a problem with the jailbreaks. I can't see how they would loose any money with it, and who uses them, knows that he can potentially brick the device.

whether they are looking the other way on jailbreaks or not, this sounds like a rather serious security problem. it's nice that i can run my own code on the device, but that also means that any mp3 files i download off the internet can run other, potentially malicious code.
Post reply on HN