[diogoteixeira87]

I'm not a dev or programmer. I'm just a "regular" folk trying to understand the real issues of BlackBerry adopting android.

Some sources say the device is not rootable. What is the exact meaning of this?

Supposing that a guy is able to modify the PRIV somehow, how this could affect others?

The problem of BlackBerry adopting android is only more hackers attraction? The system is really that vulnerable? Even if not rootable?

Hope some of you can help me understand. Just like me, I think most will decide buying it or not considering some of these aspects.

Thanks!

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[KermEd]

I may have built one application before... this is a question that keeps me on the fence as well.

But I won't say never, with enough resources you can do anything. I will say it would be incredibly difficult. And if I was overseeing the project, in my analysis I'd likely determine more resources are required than BlackBerry has available to make it happen.

But it's possible someone had a plan that will succeed where all other Android manufacturers have failed. And that they can do so with a barebones staff. They have some things in their favour.

In order to get hacked they will need enough attention from the public to get hacker interest, and it needs to be a hacker that will disclose the hack not just sit on it.

Root: By default you have only some permission to access areas of your device. This way you can't modify a system file. By this same logic a virus also can't modify a system file. With root access, you can. This means you can replace core OS components with anything. What you do rooted will only affect your device. People do this to add low level things they couldn't otherwise like system wide ad blocking.

BlackBerry has made root access extremely difficult on BB10 after some mistakes allowed the PlayBook to be rooted. If they can bring that intact to Android, I suspect it will do well. But there are many complications, not the least of which Android is open source - meaning it's vulnerabilities are available to read for hackers as well.

Posted to CB via my Passport | Lloyd Summers | FileArchiveHaven

[paulwallace1234]

Some sources say the device is not rootable. What is the exact meaning of this?

Supposing that a guy is able to modify the PRIV somehow, how this could affect others?


Posted with Z30!

Now, I'm not too familiar with Android rooting, but they have adopted the same HW Security that you have in BB10 devices; you see every device has a specific signing key which is given on manufacturing, when the device boots it checks that the system files are still signed with this key (If they aren't it will not boot); this is where the rooting theory comes from, if a root modifies system files it would break the signature hence the non booting of the OS.

[cgk]

The real truth is - none of us know. We could *guess* and those with specific security expertise could take a stab at the risks but its impossible to make any real judgement until people get their hands on devices and people start playing with devices and trying to seriously break the security.

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

How many people do you know... know of a threat that has affected their Android Phone?

Google patches many of the threats very quickly... OEM's and Carriers were the slow down in the past.
A LARGE percentage of the threats are due to risky behavior of the users.... rooting, and 3rd party app stores.

OP, Android isn't going to be as easy to secure as BB10. But hope are it will sell more than 800K devices a quarter.


The way I view it... it can't be any worse than using a Windows PC these days.

[diogoteixeira87]

Thank you! I feel better now!

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