Android executes everything you type

This is one of the more bizarre bugs we’ve ever heard. The T-Mobile G1 has an open root shell that interprets everything you type as a command. It was discovered when a user just happened to type the word ‘reboot’ in a conversation and the phone immediately rebooted. A patch has already been rolled out to fix this issue. It also buttons up the earlier telnetd SUID problem.

[photo: tnkgrl]

Comments [11]

tagged: android, G1, google, t-mobile, t-mobile g1, telnetd, tnkgrl

Reader Comments

this is not a but, it is a feature :)

Posted at 12:50 pm on Nov 9th, 2008 by therian

It’s not a bug either!

Posted at 1:01 pm on Nov 9th, 2008 by TheBlunderbuss

How did _that_ one get by the dev team? Just think of the power you have… to accidentally screw things up. Maybe it was a debug feature that was supposed to be closed up and wasn’t.

Posted at 1:20 pm on Nov 9th, 2008 by PocketBrain

wow… how could that be missed? that is certainly one enormous design flaw.

Posted at 1:52 pm on Nov 9th, 2008 by Sean

That’s a definite oops.

Posted at 2:29 pm on Nov 9th, 2008 by herbicide

I’m having difficulty figuring out how this could have been set up accidentally. It must have been used to run some commands in the early tests before the user interface was completely finished.

Posted at 2:32 pm on Nov 9th, 2008 by macegr

The SUID problem on telnet is then presumably not a SUID problem. User account types it, telnetd fails to create the port. However, the background root service starts it. For further fun of this type, merely enter “rm -rf /” as the user and wait for the phone to turn off by itself!

Posted at 3:04 pm on Nov 9th, 2008 by jaduncan

This reminds me of an early issue with Dow Jones News Retrieval Quotes during the dial-up dials. I don’t recall which company had the ticker symbol “DISC” back then, but if you had it in your portfolio and requeted the quote, their service hung up. It was understood as DISConnect.

Posted at 7:20 pm on Nov 9th, 2008 by Anne H

Reminds me of a friend from college who had to use a pseudonym to shop at Service Merchandise (they had a terminal entry supply system that shoppers could use). His last name was “Cancel”. Seriously. His orders would get canceled (no surprise) when submitted.

Posted at 7:12 am on Nov 10th, 2008 by PocketBrain

Reminds me of this:

School: Did you really name your son Robert’); Drop Table Students;–?
Mom: Oh. Yes. Little Bobby Tables we call him
School: Well, we’ve lost this year’s student records. I hope you’re happy.
Mom: and I hope you’ve learned to sanitize your database inputs.

Posted at 11:54 am on Nov 10th, 2008 by mrlipring

@mrlipring
Credit where credit is due -_-

http://xkcd.com/327/

Posted at 12:38 pm on Nov 10th, 2008 by cde

Android executes everything you type

Recent Posts

Reader Comments

Leave a Reply

hacks

resources

rss newsfeeds

Most Commented On (30 days)

Recent Comments