Comment 1 Quim Gil 2008-12-29 16:37:20 UTC

Changing summary to make it more clear.

Comment 2 Ryan Abel 2008-12-30 02:30:09 UTC

(In reply to comment #1)
> Changing summary to make it more clear.
> 

"Bricked" is significantly less clear here, as "bricked" means totally
unrecoverable, not reboot-looping but reflashable. The original summary is
really more appropriate, but how about a compromise?

Anyway, Carsten Munk was looking into something like this for a new bootmenu.

This would be very useful to have, but has security implications (ie retrieval
of private data including account passwords etc from a stolen device).

One way around it might be to require the device lock code in order to retrieve
the rootfs (if nolo is able to retrieve lock_code from mtd1 and the flasher
protocol allows for sending it down the wire), preferably with a delay before
accepting further commands on failure to make brute forcing impractical.

It may already be a lost cause however: I was recently able to recover an n810
by creating a bootmenu+ssh initfs on a healthy tablet and flashing it on the
reboot-looping one.

I wouldn't be too worried about the security implications of this: the first
rule of computer security is "If the bad guys have physical control of the
system, you have lost."

Things like password locks are designed to prevent somebody with brief access
from getting into the device: somebody from getting in to the device while you
are in the shower at the gym, for example. If they have enough time to whip out
a laptop, hook up a USB cable, reboot the device, hold the HOME key down, and
suck down the file system, then reboot the device again back into its previous
state, all without raising eyebrows - well, they probably just lifted your
wallet instead.

Comment 5 Andre Klapper 2009-03-24 15:46:18 UTC

While the idea is interesting I don't expect anyone to work on this (other
priorities), so it might be a WONTFIX from Nokia's point of view.
Pity that Flasher is not open source afaik, otherwise people could come up with
patches. :-/

Comment 6 Eero Tamminen 2009-03-24 18:11:43 UTC

> While the idea is interesting I don't expect anyone to work on this (other
> priorities), so it might be a WONTFIX from Nokia's point of view.

From my point of view it could be kept open. I think the idea is useful (for
both of the presented reasons) although nobody's been working on it yet.

In trying to debug bug 6350, I had this same desire.  Reflashing the rootfs
unwedges the device, but before doing so for the second time I'd like to grab
the current rootfs and figure out what broke.

Marking this as a duplicate of bug 6720, as they both seem to describe the same
desire: reading data *from* the device over USB in the pre-booted state.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 6720 ***