VietNamNet Bridge - BPhone, the first Vietnam-made smartphone, was introduced by BKAV, its manufacturer, as the safest model in the world. However, it has been rooted (meaning hacked or jailbroken) by a group of coders from TekCafe.vn.

 

 

It took the engineers two minutes on June 26 afternoon to root BPhone. “Root’ is understood as a ‘jailbreak’ for iOS-based smartphones or ‘hack’ for Windows Phone.

BKAV had said that BPhone was the safest smartphone in the world thanks to security measures it had applied to prevent users from interfering with the system. 

The statement, considered a challenge thrown by the manufacturer, has prompted Vietnamese engineers and technicians to try to hack the phone.

Buu Dien newspaper on June 26 reported that Xnohat, an administrator of HVA Online, Vietnam’s largest hackers’ forum, failed to interfere with BPhone’s operating system.

The person with the pseudonym Hong Phuc Nguyen on his Facebook page had 8 hours to hack the BPhone, but he did not succeed with usual operations.

To access the BPhone operating system (BOS), Xnohat tried three different levels – accessing ADB Shell, unlocking Bootloader and rooting.

At the lowest level, Xnohat connected BPhone and computer, then used ADB as the intermediate tool to access from computer to BPhone’s systematic file. 

When the device was connected, BPhone accepted the ADB regime and the PC also accepted ADB. However, when scanning with PC, BPhone could not be found.

Xnohat guessed that BKAV had prevented the ADB interference on BPhone.

At a higher level, Xnohat tried to unlock Bootloader, a computer program that loads an operating system or other systems installed by manufacturers in smartphone memories. However, he failed again.

Xnohat also tried to root BPhone, the highest level of interference into a smartphone. Anohat copied a system file into BPhone, then activated it and conducted some operations to hijack the phone. The file copying succeeded, but the interference failed.

Xnohat on Tinh Te, a forum for high technology lovers, wrote that he did not have much time, while he did not dare make rough interference on the BPhone, a borrowed one. 
He failed to hack BPhone.

However, just one day later, TekCafe’s engineers affirmed that they successfully rooted BPhone and installed Custom Recovery on it.

They also tried to use ADB (Android Debug Bridge), an error fixing tool provided by Google, to cause interference from the computer into BPhone. However, they did not gain anything with the method.

Believing that BKAV disabled the feature, TekCafe conducted operations on BPhone with Android Terminal Emulator, successfully rooting the phone within two minutes.

TekCafe said the method only roots the phone temporarily, which means the gains will be lost if original data is reset. However, the complete rooting will be done soon.

Buu Dien