[DHowett]

I think the entire ensuing discussion and a small part of this followup article point to the fact that at the time at which he exploited the device, the kernel source was unavailable, as well as that flashing a new boot image is only useful if you can actually build a kernel to flash.

Given that the kernel source was not made available until the next day, he could not have used oem unlock - even "if he wanted to."

[saurik]

To be fair, I'd say the goal of my article is to just make certain that everyone else can replicate what I did and learn from it; normally I'd co-release a post with the announcement, but I wanted to do the announcement sooner and wasn't expecting it to burn quite so much of my time.

Additionally, my article documents the threat of this kind of security exploit on Glass, along with some issues with this specific device that make exploits of any kind more dangerous (the lack of a PIN being key), as well as looking at some scary examples of Glass-specific malware opportunities.

[michaelwww]

Thank you for performing a valuable public service because we need to have the facts first before having a discussion about the implications. I read an article around the same time about the claim by Julian Assange that the internet is a threat to civilization, and thought your work tied in nicely as a cautionary warning about the path we are currently on. http://www.salon.com/2013/04/30/tk_5_partner_15/singleton/

[smackmybishop]

Why would you need the kernel source to fastboot unlock?

[saurik]

I encourage you to read the article, as this is one of the things that I cover (including a quote from the developer of ClockwordMod regarding the practicality of using fastboot oem unlock for purposes of getting root on a device without anything to start with, such as kernel source in specific).

So, it is possible, it just isn't practical, especially when an exploit happened to be so easy to come by. Once you then have a security exploit, you can then start to ask "what does this let me do that an unlocked bootloader does not", and the ramifications on Glass are, at least to me, interesting.

[ben1040]

Unlocking the bootloader just allows you to have access to boot an unsigned system image. He points out in the article that you'd still need an image to boot.

With an unlocked bootloader, you could boot something that then messed with the filesystem to drop "su" out in the bin (and this is what happens when you boot a recovery image to root an Android phone).

But in order to do that, you'd need kernel sources, so that you could have something that would properly boot on the device and mount the filesystem.