tags:bootloaderandroidlinux original link: Low-Level Development on Retail Android Hardware - Reconnaissance and Prototyping a Bootloader newsletter link:


Exploits Club Summary:

Have you ever thought “huh, I really want to write a bootloader for an off the shelf Android device to try and boot mainline Linux?” No? Well step aside, because that’s exactly what @t1mschumi set out to do. In his first blog post, he takes us behind the scenes of the project, explaining the initial progress made on his Samsung Galaxy Core Plus. The post recaps the initial reverse engineering conducted on S-BOOT, talking through how he was able to enable verbose logging and review the overall boot flow. Equipped with a better understanding of how S-BOOT works under the hood, he was able to craft a simple executable and get it executed as expected. Afterwards, he troubleshoots some issues associated with loading and booting a kernel due to some finicky size constraints. It wraps up with some thoughts on next steps and where the project can go from here.