Motorola Droid Is Rooted

Well, our friends over at AllDroid have succeeded in rooting the Motorola Droid.  I have performed this operation successfully.

I don't endorse this procedure and no doubt it voids all kinds of warranties.  If you do it and brick your phone, it's your own stupid fault for believing everything you read on the Internet.

If you don't know what rooting is or what it might be used for, please, for the love of Ghu, do not root your phone.  There are a million ways for a n00b to brick a rooted computer or for the computer to be exploited.

If you don't know what this means, just don't do it.

The procedure is as follows:

Update to Android v2.0.1

Please note: if your phone has the Android v2.0.1 update, you do not need to perform this section. Skip immediately to Apply the Root Hack.

If you already have v2.0.1 and perform this section anyway, you won't harm your phone.  It will, however, be a pointless waste of your time.

1. Download the OS update file.
   
   Do not extract this file.
   
   
2. Rename the file to update.zip.
   
   
3. Connect your Droid to your computer via USB.
   
   
4. On the Droid, go to the Notifications bar and select USB Connected then tap Mount.
   
   
5. Once the device is mounted, the SD card will show as a removable device on your computer
   
   
6. Copy update.zip into the root directory of your SD Card (/sdcard).
   
   
7. Unmount the device from your computer, and turn the Droid off.
   
   
8. Hold down the "X" key on the physical keyboard and while doing so press the power button. Hold both of them down until you see a Triangle with an "!".
   
   
9. Press and hold the Vol+ button, then press the camera button.  This will present a menu at the top of the screen.
   
   
10. Using the D-pad on the physical keyboard, select the option to update with the update.zip file.
    
    
11. This should take a little bit. Once it's done select the option to reboot the phone.
    
    
12. The phone will take much longer than normal to boot, don't worry as it is normal.
    

Apply the Root Hack

1. Download the droid-super_user.zip file.
   (md5sum cf653352967253e99d967498ffd9ce69).
   
   Do not extract this file.
   
   
2. Rename the file to update.zip.
   
   
3. Plug your Droid into your computer via USB.
   
   
4. On the Droid, go to the Notifications bar and select USB Connected then press Mount.
   
   
5. Once the device is mounted, the SD card will show as a removable device on your computer
   
   
6. Copy update.zip into the root directory of your SD Card (/sdcard).
   
   This will overwrite the file placed there in the previous section.
   
   
7. Unmount the device from your computer, and turn the Droid off.
   
   
8. Hold down the X key on the physical keyboard and while doing so press the power button. Hold both of them down until you see a Triangle with an !.
   
   
9. Press and hold the Vol+ button, then press the camera button.  This will present a menu at the top of the screen.
   
   
10. Using the D-pad on the physical keyboard, select the option to update with the update.zip file.
    
    
11. This should take a little bit. Once it's done select the option to reboot the phone.
    

When this is finished, you should be able to run a terminal emulator and enter the command: su -

There's an interesting theory on how it was hacked:

Look at the zip file. The file contents are only about like 300KB, but the file is 10MB.

About the same size as the actual 2.0.1 OTA update.zip

The OTA update zip file has some RSA certs in it, yet the droid root update lacks them. Somehow the hacker must have used this unused deadspace in the zip file to fool the Android updater into thinking the zip file was signed, when the actual contents of the zip file don't contain the update but just contain the su binary.

In any case, I'm one step closer to being able to SSH to my Droid ...