There has been some rumbling going on as Maemo has previously been quite of a open platform to roam around compared to any of the big mobile OS’s. This seemed to change for N950/N9 when beta2 firmware was introduced with a lot of restrictions, in essence rather than embracing openess turning it to another cat and mouse game like that the jailbreaking community is doing in Apple’s side.
Aegis=Mobile Simplified Security Framework for MeeGo
I wanted to check what happened to develsh because I published one method of disabling Aegis “using” the privileges granted by develsh. Despite what many people thought, this does not “crack” Aegis, but rather uses privileges that were granted to us. I avoided using the word “hole” while describing the method because I thought it was not a security hole: rather, this had to be an allowed, premeditated thing. A kind of “yes, Aegis is there for the average user, but you install develsh and you still have the hackable device you’ve come to love from earlier incantations”.
Oh, how wrong I was!
Nokia has now greatly reduced the amount of privileges granted to develsh in beta2. Up to the point you nowCANNOT even issue a deadly simple dmesg command to _read_ the kernel log.
Is this a reaction from Nokia because the above method allowed you to disable Aegis? Is this the first move from Nokia in the cat and mouse game that is going to be played starting now — the same game Apple likes to play with jailbreakers?
I don’t know. I would like a clear answer here. - javispedro
Though thankfully, thanks to javispedro, restrictions by Aegis have been able to overcome.
I just rebuilt it, then loaded beta2 kernel. It even boots with an _unmodified_ (as in, without lizardo’s patch) kernel. This is the new part. The hack can be put there for convenience, though.
A “warranty void” warning is now shown, but after that, Harmattan boots normally and Aegis gets into “open” mode instead of “normal” as in beta1 times. This means there should be no need to hack anything, because it already works: even as the unprivileged user, I can send commands to MCE via D-Bus without getting the dreaded AccessDenied error.
What’s even better is that maybe this was how it was supposed to be done? The backdoor that will be left open.
I’m happy about this because it seems exactly like the opposite, an official/deliberate grasp loosening. This was NOT possible in beta1!
As you will see if you run one of the kernels and read the warning about warranty voided, this really seems like the official way I was asking for.
Lets hope so because it’s the community that really made the old Maemo devices. I have owned phones with pretty much every mobile OS there is, but on no other have i started a thread about UI addition that brings new UI elements when changing song on N900 and it being made by the community in 24hrs and ready for download.
N9 might not be the nerd toy N900 and the previous tablets where, but it should certainly use it’s community as it’s asset, rather than trying to alienate it.
My dream OS has always been about having sleek, modern and smooth exterior with a core that’s easily accessible to those who want it and for the rest kept hidden, now when we got the other half, lets not spoil the other one.
Source MeeGo forum
