[XPERIA X10 Android Development] j4mm3r:
Hello everyone,

Its been great to have root on your X10 using the method posted here:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=711907

Well, this method works all right but I did some investigating of my own to audit the state of the system after its been rooted. Thanks to the discussions you may find here: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=712178, the original developers soon chose to update the Rooting tutorial with some additional steps (See post #2 and #4 of the rooting thread). This is all good, because now you have the real power to act as a the *real* superuser i.e uid 0.

Most of the discussions that follow are only intended for users who are well versed with general *NIX security and concepts about user ids, permissions and other things. So please disregard this post if you have no ideas of these concepts.

Ok, so first things first. I basically followed the root tutorial as it is all the way upto step3 (or step3a as in my case). Remember, you essentially have a rooted phone right after step2, step3/3a just adds the updated baseband firmware, which has no effect whatsoever on the subsequent things that you do to your phone.

Well essentially, what I did do was install the "su" binary and the "Superuser.apk" following in the lines of step4v2 (post #2 in root thread). These are essential to give you control over your system as without them you are simply relying on a hacked "sh" binary which runs with elevated privileges. Here are the file permission masks for the "sh" binary which gets installed after the FOTA in step2:

# ls -l sh
ls -l sh
-rwsrwsrwx root root 86944 2010-06-28 18:08 sh
#

Wait!!! This is *not* quite ok. What this means is that any process can use this binary to gain super user privileges. This binary is setuid and setgid root!!!

Well you might say that... so is the case for "su":

# ls -l su
ls -l su
-rwsrwsrwx root root 22120 2010-06-28 08:08 su
#

But, this is different because its use is controlled by the Superuser Whitelist application that was installed with Superuser.apk.

This difference is crucial because if any non-privileged application and process forks and execs "su", the Superuser Whitelist app would immediately post a notification screen on the phone and provide options to allow or disallow.

With the "sh" binary installed on your phone as it is, you are basically inviting *any* application to be able to do anything it wants to your phone... and all this without your knowledge!!!

To test this theory, all you need to do is simply install one of the terminal emulators floating around the market or use the one provided in the rooting thread under the step4/app folder and launch it. It straight away, launches you into a root shell. Here is a screen shot of what you can do this way:

(Remember, no warnings, no notifications and all this can be done by any app under the hood)

Here is what you can do to make your phone more secure.

Step1: Download an alternative shell or simply change the permissions on the "sh" binary:

# cd /system/bin
# chmod 755 sh

Step2: In case you downloaded an alternative shell like "bash" and copied it under your /system/bin folder, simply get rid of the original "sh" binary and create a symlink to the one you download, for ex: bash:

# cd /system/bin
# rm sh
# ln -s bash sh

(Note: the above steps assume that you have /system mounted as rw, if you don't know what that means, then you should not be reading this, sorry)

Remember, when installing any alternative shell make sure that its permission mode is set to 755 or lower. I recommend to *never* set the setuid and setgid bits on the shell!!!

Here is what I did personally:

Installed bash from here: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=537827

Installed it under /system/bin *without* the setuid and setgid bits

Removed the "sh" binary

Created a symlink named "sh" to the binary "bash"

This way, whenever I launch "adb shell" or use any terminal emulator on my phone, I always get a un-privileged shell. To get root, simply fire "su".

PS: This information is not intended for casual users who have limited or no knowledge of UNIX or UNIX like sytems like Linux, Adrdoid SDK commands like adb or don't know their way around if faced with a command line!!!

PS: Another post with some steps to properly secure the system: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=712945