FindDevicesWithUnsignedBootloaedrs¶

Given the huge number of devices out there, buying each device and checking it doesn't scale. Especially as there are multiple variants and even multiple versions of the variants.

For instance for the Galaxy SII we have the GT-I9100 that has an Exynos4 and GT-I9100G that has an OMAP4. And for the GT-I9100G, there are multiple versions.

Making it easy for people to check the devices they have¶

The first step would be to document what tools already exist to do that and the ones that are lacking.

Tool	Uses	supported hardware	Pakckages	Howto
omap-usb-boot	* checking if the device is has restricted boot * Loading bootloaders from USB * booting on a different boot media	OMAP3, OMAP4, OMAP5	Parabola , Archlinux through AUR	* check if the device has restricted boot through USB
omap-u-boot-utils	* Loading bootloaders from USB * Loading bootloaders from the UART	OMAP3, OMAP4	Parabola , Archlinux through AUR	?
crucible	* checking fuses settings	i.MX53, i.MX6DL, i.MX6DQ, i.MX6SL, i.MX6SLL, i.MX6SX, i.MX6UL, i.MX6ULL, i.MX6ULZ, i.MX7D, i.MX7ULP	TODO	TODO
cbootimage	* Generate images * Dump images (including signatures?)	Tegra ?	Parabola , Archlinux through AUR
tegrarcm	* Load bootloaders from USB	Tegra ?	TODO	TODO
0xFFFF	* Load signed bootloaders (-c) from USB	OMAP3430 and OMAP3630 Might be easy to add more OMAP3 by just commenting code in cold-flash.c	TODO, patch for libusb1	TODO
sunxi-tools	?	Allwinner SOCs?	Parabola, archlinux	TODO

Notes:

Even with fuseegelee we might want to know if the device has restricted boot or not. See the BootloadersFreedom for more details about the limitations of fuseegelee and how to potentailly bypass them.
sunxi-tools: does "if sunxi => unsigned?" still stand now that there are fuses drivers? If so still mention the tool as it could detect the SOC which would then tell us that it's most probably unsigned.
No tools (beside devmem2 and a good datasheet) to analyze boot settings and dump registers at runtime?

Checking images at large scale¶

The idea would be to find a way to get a very large number of stock images for Android devices make tests on the images and automatically check if the bootloaders are signed.

If the bootloaders are under a free software license and are unsigned, once we get and identify the corresponding source code we could publish them.

For the signed bootloaders under a free software license we'd better check with the FSF what is best to do as we need not to redistribute any software that is practically nonfree.

Constraints:

Check with FSF lawyers how to do it legally