OnePlus 2 Boots with a Tampered Secondary Bootloader

It's fair to say the OnePlus 2 doesn't have the best reputation when it comes to the Android enthusiast community. It used the Snapdragon 810 SoC (which has had a ton of criticism), never received Android 7.0 Nougat (even though it was promised), and has been shown to have vulnerabilities in the past that OnePlus refuses to fix. Now, a new discovery from Aleph Security again shows the OnePlus 2 boots with a tampered Secondary Bootloader.

This means that OnePlus has designed the Primary Bootloader of the OnePlus 2 to not do any validation of the Secondary Bootloader at all. Speculation from the research team says this may be due to a lenient hardware configuration. So this vulnerability allows an attacker to tamper with the secondary bootloader partition and then completely disable the signature validation of the rest of the bootloader chain. Not only that, but this can also result in signature validation being disabled for other SBL-validated partitions such as TrustZone and ABOOT as well.

They continued working with the vulnerability and were able to easily pinpoint the exact SBL function that validates the rest of the chain. After a quick patching of the call @ 0xFEC0E90C they avoid the failing path and booting with tampered aboot and tz now succeeds. The team then proceeded to modify one of the fastboot oem commands. This enabled them to temporarily unlock the bootloader and turn off the device tampering flag.

They also confirmed equivalent partitions of older OnePlus devices (OnePlus One and OnePlus X) have no digital signatures at all so they are vulnerable as well. When they got in contact with OnePlus about this OnePlus 2 vulnerability, they were told the device would not be fixed since it is "about to reach the product's lifecycle."

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Source: Aleph Security

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Motorola Responds to Complaints About Moto Z2 Force Screen Scratches

Motorola is proud of the ShatterShield screen that they use on the Moto Z2 Force. The company used it last year with the Moto Z Force and put the device through a number of durability tests directly on stage right when it was announced. They advertise the screen as being shatterproof since so many people drop their phones which results in a cracked glass screen. Motorola says they've been evolving the technology over the years but some are complaining about how prone the Moto Z2 Force is to scratches.

When Motorola first launched the technology with the Droid Turbo 2, they were happy to tell people how it worked. The materials start with a rigid aluminum core for structural integrity and durability. Then they add a flexible OLED panel to help absorb the shock of a drop and then put two touch layers on top of that in case one of them breaks. They call the next layer an interior lens that's purpose is to provide a clear protective shield that won't crack or shatter.

Then they add an exterior lens on top of that that is supposed to be harder and help protect the display from normal wear and tear. With the Moto Z2 Force, this exterior lens can be replaced by Motorola only (they let customers replace it before), but it's this exterior lens that has been shown to be scratched very easily. Pocketnow reached out to Motorola to ask why this was happening and their response seems to indicate that it shouldn't be this way.

The company said the ShatterShield display of the Moto Z2 Force now uses a 3D design in an attempt to compete with other flagships. Motorola claims to have done durability tests that shows it is as durable as last year's product too. They believe the Moto Z2 Force unit that is easily scratched "was one of the very first production units" and that they "do have an improvement in the works that consumers will see shortly after launch."

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Source: Pocketnow

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Custom System Animations for the LG V10, LG V20, and OnePlus 3/3T

LG might be disappointed by the lackluster sales of their most recent flagship, the LG G6, but that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of satisfied customers of LG smartphones. Sometimes, even if you are mostly content with the stock experience of your device, you want to play around with custom themes, modifications, ROMs, etc. If you are one of those people, then check out this set of custom system animations for the LG V10 and LG V20 called the oZoP Project by XDA Recognized Themer stangdriver44. The developer is hard at work porting it over to all kinds of devices, and he's also been able to get it working on the OnePlus 3 and OnePlus 3T.

This is a flashable, AROMA-based installer which lets you pick from a multitude of system animations such as iOS, FlymeOS, Google Pixel, or MIUI animations. You can also adjust the animation duration of popups and dialogs. These system animation packs have been confirmed by various users to work on the LG V10, LG V20, OnePlus 3, and OnePlus 3T, but progress is being made to get this modification working on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ as well. In case it doesn't work, there's also a flashable restore zip in each thread linked below.

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Custom Themes for OnePlus 3 Custom Themes for OnePlus 3T Custom Themes for LG V10 Custom Themes for LG V20

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Xposed Module Brings Reading Mode on MIUI 8 Devices with Custom Kernels

If you are using a custom kernel on a device with MIUI 8, then the stock Reading Mode feature may be unavailable. This feature tints the screen to filter blue light from the display so you can read easier at night. If you would like to use this feature on your MIUI 8 device, then check out this Xposed Module called PM Back by XDA Senior Member S0bes. It hooks into the KCAL advanced color control kernel interface and forces the MIUI 8 Reading Mode to operate based on KCAL. This means you can use the feature again without changing the display calibration mode through a kernel tweaking application.

MIUI 8 Reading Mode with a Custom Kernel

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Grab the PM Back Xposed Module for MIUI 8

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Overlay Adds Ambient Display for Sony Xperia Z5 and XZ on Nougat

Ambient display is one of the best features found on Android devices, but unfortunately not every device has this feature available for it. Typically, the feature is available only for those devices with OLED displays (due to battery drain concerns) as the feature lights up a part of the screen to show incoming notifications. Some OLED devices even support an always-on mode, though this is rarer. But since the feature is available in Android's source code (AOSP), developers can include the feature on any Android device they choose.

To that end, XDA Recognized Developer Rizal Lovins created an overlay that can be installed on rooted Sony Xperia Z5 and Sony Xperia XZ devices that are running stock-based Android 7.1.1 Nougat ROMs. The overlay enables ambient display mode when a notification is received. Be warned that enabling this feature on an unsupported device with an LCD display may cause more battery drain than you might think.

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Get Ambient Display on the Xperia Z5 and Xperia XZ

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Google Announces Nearby Connections 2.0, Adds Offline, High Bandwidth Communications

When Google started to roll out version 7.8 of Google Play Services back in 2015, it came with an API called Nearby Messages. This Nearby feature allowed your Android device to listen for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and inaudible sound to find out if you were in the proximity of other capable devices. This could be other Android devices (so they can communicate with each other) as well as BLE beacons that would start to become used by brands in public areas.

At Google I/O 2016, the company announced an update to Google Play Services that included some usability improvements to the Nearby API. This change would automatically equip applications with fine-grain location permissions the ability to use scan for BLE beacons using the Nearby API. The change upset a lot of people since the permissions were granted automatically and didn't prompt the user to manually decide whether or not they wanted an application to function that way.

Now, Google has launched Nearby Connections 2.0 to include some of the features they spoke about at Google I/O earlier this year. This new update allows for Android's Nearby API to provide fully-offline high bandwidth, low latency, encrypted data transfers between nearby devices in a P2P manner. Devices which are capable of receiving the update to Google Play Services version 11.0 and up will automatically gain this new functionality to the Nearby API.

To help get the ball rolling with these new features, Google has partnered with some 3rd-party companies to showcase what the API update is capable of. This includes The Weather Channel, Hotstar, and GameInsight by building an on-demand mesh network, enabling offline media sharing, and providing them ways to find new players close by (respectively). Google's Android TV team is even working on using it to build a new remote control application that simplifies the initial setup process.

Google recommends developers check out their overview page and code samples as a quick way to get started with the update.

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Source: Android Developers Blog

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Amazon Halts Sales of BLU Smartphones Over Privacy & Security Issues

Back in November of last year we reported on an issue concerning a BLU smartphone that had a controversial piece of software on them known as Adups. The original report came from KryptoWire who pointed out that the BLU R1 HD that was being sold by Amazon had this invasive software pre-installed on the devices. This software is from Shanghai Adups Technology Co. Ltd. and is said to be installed on over 700 million devices worldwide.

For those unaware, Adups is very similar to a well known piece of software in the United States called CarrierIQ. CarrierIQ was advertised as a mobile diagnostic software suite, but recorded a ton of information about a person's smartphone. The list included capabilities such as SMS recordings, SMS transmission, IMSI, IMEI exfiltration, call log transmission, command injections and more. Adups' software suite does all of that and more.

Source: KryptoWire

At the time, BLU released a statement saying Adups wasn't supposed to be included in smartphones that were shipped in the United States. The company said they had a 3rd-party handling OTA updates and they simply "made a mistake". They assured us that a new OTA update was pushed out that disabled this software so no more information could be transmitted back to servers in China. Many had thought the issue was over and done with, but 9 months later and Amazon has decided to step in.

While Amazon had been selling the BLU R1 HD as part of the company's Prime Exclusive smartphone collection, but the retailer was also selling a number of other smartphones from BLU. We're unsure if this Adups software is the reason why Amazon decided to halt sales of BLU's smartphones, but the company did say "security and privacy of our customers is of the utmost importance" and that BLU's phones would be unavailable from Amazon.com until the issue is resolved.

If it is indeed because of Adups, then it's curious as to why it took Amazon 9 months to finally do something. BLU says they are in a process to review so they can get their devices reinstated on the Amazon website.

Source: CNET

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