The theory behind 'rooting'--

[megabyzus]

As the bounty (and time passed) increases to enable rooting on the Verizon and AT&T versions of the Samsung S5, I've become curious why this has been the case while other devices seems to have been rooted more easily.

Is there a link or source I can go to and learn more about the process that developers of rooting software go through? I want to get a better understanding what rooting really means, how it is developed, and what hurdles (eg what's an 'exploit'?) must be overcome by those who bring rooting capabilities to the rest of the population.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Golfdriver97]

As the bounty (and time passed) increases to enable rooting on the Verizon and AT&T versions of the Samsung S5, I've become curious why this has been the case while other devices seems to have been rooted more easily.

Is there a link or source I can go to and learn more about the process that developers of rooting software go through? I want to get a better understanding what rooting really means, how it is developed, and what hurdles (eg what's an 'exploit'?) must be overcome by those who bring rooting capabilities to the rest of the population.

Thanks in advance!

Welcome to the forums.
By technicality, rooting your device (similar to gaining system administrator access for Windows) is utilizing an exploit in the OS. Most of the time the exploit is used in the boot process, as that is the weakest link in devices.

As far as Samsung goes, they are placing a security protocol in the bootloader (called Knox) to help reduce circumventing the boot process to gain root access.

I guess another question is what other devices are you comparing them to? Nexus devices are easy to root, by design.

 

[cpaight]

Here's a couple to get you started:

Rooting - is it for me? Some Q&A | Android Central
Everything You Need to Know About Rooting Your Android Phone

 

[megabyzus]

Welcome to the forums.
By technicality, rooting your device (similar to gaining system administrator access for Windows) is utilizing an exploit in the OS. Most of the time the exploit is used in the boot process, as that is the weakest link in devices.

As far as Samsung goes, they are placing a security protocol in the bootloader (called Knox) to help reduce circumventing the boot process to gain root access.

I guess another question is what other devices are you comparing them to? Nexus devices are easy to root, by design.

Thank you for your response. As for your question about my comparison to other devices, it seems other variants of Samsung S5 have already been successfully rooted and only the Verizon and AT&T ones have proven hard to crack (which is one of the reasons for my origin question). Here is the list from Chainfire.

 

[Golfdriver97]

Thank you for your response. As for your question about my comparison to other devices, it seems other variants of Samsung S5 have already been successfully rooted and only the Verizon and AT&T ones have proven hard to crack. Here is the list from Chainfire.

Ok. Verizon is known for encrypting the bootloader. Sometimes decrypting it is required fro root.

 

[megabyzus]

Ok. Verizon is known for encrypting the bootloader. Sometimes decrypting it is required fro root.

Yes, these are exactly examples of items that that I want to learn about, how they are connected, why and when. Do you know of sources, in addition to what cpaight kindly posted, that would go through the life cycle of rooting and its contingencies?

BTW, to be clear, I have rooted my own cellphones before using the recipes on the net. So I know what 'rooting' is. I'm referring to the software dev and OS tampering side of rooting not the consumption side.

 

[Golfdriver97]

Yes, these are exactly examples of items that that I want to learn about, how they are connected, why and when. Do you know of sources, in addition to what cpaight kindly posted, that would go through the life cycle of rooting and its contingencies?

BTW, to be clear, I have rooted my own cellphones before using the recipes on the net. So I know what 'rooting' is. I'm referring to the software dev and OS tampering side of rooting not the consumption side.

Not really. I don't know much of the nuts and bolts of how to create a root access.

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