Exploiting a Bug in Google's Glass

"At this point, I could have simply complained to Google in order to obtain the source code for the kernel. However, I expected that would take days (Google actually ended up posting the code within hours on Saturday, but that was under rather large public pressure), "<p>FWIW:<p>1. It wouldn't have taken days, it would have taken roughly the same time no matter when it happened, or whether it was requested privately or publicly.<p>In most cases, faster. Part of the time delay was that I needed to give the code.google.com oncall folks a heads up in case it caused them a massive amount of traffic (it's generally bad form to cause a DDOS to someone else's service without giving them a heads up), since that was not the original planned release mechanism, and historically, these releases generate a bunch of traffic.<p>2. The very small number of times (in the 7 years i've been there) these things have been screwed up, even privately, we have almost always given people source within hours, so i'm going to say it was more that I try to correct mistakes as quickly as possible.<p>The only case it didn't happen that quickly that i'm aware of was when someone in a beta program requested pre-release GPL source, which we, of course, gave them, but it took a day or two to actually pull it together.<p>When it comes to stuff like open source compliance, what you do when things go wrong matters as much as what you do when things go right.<p>You should always feel free to ask folks for source, and beat them over the head if they don't reply quickly.<p>Besides that, the general rule of thumb for the GPL is that if you give binaries outside the company, that's what matters, not whether it was only sold to a few people, labeled a beta, or whatever.<p>There were a few companies (this is about 13 years ago now) using GCC that tried to use NDA's to separately restrict GPL release of new architecture patches until some "public release date" for that architecture, and the FSF threatened suit. It got worked out, and eventually led to this seemingly random message to the GCC mailing list: <a href="http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2001-07/msg01342.html" rel="nofollow">http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2001-07/msg01342.html</a><p>(This is also when the GPL FAQ was updated with the same answer)

Very pleased to see such a detailed post. I'm also perturbed by how quickly I went from "Sweet, I can't wait to get glass and compile my own stuff," to "Wait, right, security holes in a 24/7 camera. Umm..." I mean, there have been studies that show you can identify passwords from audio recordings of known keyboard keys clicking. Then again, we did already have such as cellphones. (For quite some time I preferred iOS /because/ it was so hard to jailbreak...)

While the first part of this article couldn't decide whether it was directed toward technical or non-technical audience, second part about security implications of such an easy way to get root was definitely thought-provoking.<p>While I was super-eager to get Glass before, it really got me wondering if having camera and microphone in your glasses is such an great idea after all.

Relevant - 4 days ago there was a twitter pic posted and much discussion on HN [1].<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5614920" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5614920</a>

Summary: He did you not use oem unlock (but he could have if he wanted to), but rather exploited a race condition bug that let him gain root.

Looks like there's going to be an IO talk about rooting Glass: <a href="https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions/332704837" rel="nofollow">https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions/332704837</a>

I'm not at all surprised that Glass can be rooted and such, but I wonder about the social implications. A while ago I (incorrectly, sort of) made a post saying that you wouldn't be able to tell when Glass is recording. Somebody replied and mentioned that it would have a red light visible when it is. I didn't bother replying because, despite precedent, I had no proof that Glass would be able to be rooted etc. My point is, with Glass already rooted, is anything stopping somebody from having Glass without a red light while recording?

The thing we seem to be missing is what was Dan Morrel getting at when he thought they didn't get root? Di he think they just ran adb against the glass and figured out how to talk to it directly via the same calls the mirror api uses? Is there some easier way to "hack" Glass into doing interesting stuff?