Posts Tagged ‘e-fuse’

Motorola: e-Fuse Won’t Brick Hacked Droid X’s

July 18th, 2010

The other day I mentioned reports that Motorola’s Droid X has an e-Fuse chip that some wondered if it “locks the bootloader and will brick the phone if the bootloader is modified. ”

Motorola has responded by putting those fears to rest.

From Engadget:

Motorola’s primary focus is the security of our end users and protection of their data, while also meeting carrier, partner and legal requirements. The Droid X and a majority of Android consumer devices on the market today have a secured bootloader. In reference specifically to eFuse, the technology is not loaded with the purpose of preventing a consumer device from functioning, but rather ensuring for the user that the device only runs on updated and tested versions of software. If a device attempts to boot with unapproved software, it will go into recovery mode, and can re-boot once approved software is re-installed. Checking for a valid software configuration is a common practice within the industry to protect the user against potential malicious software threats. Motorola has been a long time advocate of open platforms and provides a number of resources to developers to foster the ecosystem including tools and access to devices via MOTODEV at http://developer.motorola.com.

What it means is that the e-Fuse will shut the Droid X down if you try to run an unapproved bootloader. But, it will not brick the phone.

So for those worried that Motorola was taking a hardline approach with the Droid X can breathe a sigh of relief.

REPORT: Droid X Bricks if You Try to Jailbreak, Mod

July 16th, 2010

Fans of Motorola’s Droid X may have reason for second thoughts with rumors that it has an insane e-Fuse chip that “locks the bootloader and will brick the phone if the bootloader is modified. ”

From Droid World:

If the eFuse fails to verify this information then the eFuse receives a command to “blow the fuse” or “trip the fuse”. This results in the booting process becoming corrupted and resulting in a permanent bricking of the Phone. This FailSafe is activated anytime the bootloader is tampered with or any of the above three parts of the phone has been tampered with.

The eFuse is a rewrittable module and thus once it has been tripped it can be repaired but this procedure can only be done by Motorola. It requires hardware (I’m not sure what type) and the program (I’m not sure what Motorola is using) written in JTAG.

However, some have countered that that the new may not be as dire as many are claiming.

“OMAP handsets already have e-fuse in place as part of the M-Shield hardware security technology built into TI’s OMAP system on a chip,” says Boy Genius. “It is on the very hackable DROID and the not-so-hacking-friendly Milestone, but it is not being used by Motorola to lock the bootloader of the handset. The current theory being put forth by the non-alarmists in the Android hacking community suggests that the DROID X is locked in a similar manner to the Milestone.”

So though the jury’s still out on jailbreaking, it probably won’t be enough of a reason not to purchase a Droid X.