Root

This article covers obtaining administrative rights. For the Mexican architect, writer and actor see Luis van Rooten .

As rooting , English Rooting , procuring of privileges (Administrator Real), for and through is user on a device with UNIX-like operating system called. The word derives from the administrator - account from which to Unix -like operating systems Unix and root account is.

On most smartphones and tablet computers with Linux- or BSD -based mobile operating systems, the manufacturers have blocked access to the root account. For example, it is not possible to uninstall preinstalled software. These locks must be bypassed for full device access. The term “rooting” has established itself on Android systems for this process . On Apple's iOS , this process is known as jailbreaking .

background

Devices with so-called mobile operating systems such as Android or iOS are usually delivered with restricted user rights . In this way, the security architecture of the system prevents the user or apps installed by the user from gaining direct access to system data and the data of other apps. For example, WLAN access data stored in the system settings cannot be read, changed or deleted by user apps. The user or apps installed by him cannot change the data and apps stored by the manufacturer on a system partition. Such restrictions can be removed with root access.

Few and mostly smaller manufacturers deliver their devices already rooted (also known as pre-rooted ). So-called custom ROMs such as B. CyanogenMod or LineageOS , which completely replace the pre-installed system, are usually already pre-rooted or root access can be easily activated. Only a few manufacturers allow the devices to be rooted while maintaining the manufacturer's guarantee. An example of a device rooted at the factory was the Fairphone 1 with Android 4.2 “Jelly Bean” from 2013. But also for the Fairphone 2 from 2016 there is the option of rooting through an official image of Android “Fairphone OS Open,” which dated User can be self-inflated without loss of warranty.

literature

• Nikolay Elenkov: Android Security Internals: An In-Depth Guide to Android's Security Architecture . No Starch Press, 2014, ISBN 978-1-59327-581-5 , pp. 349 ff . (English, google.com ).

Web links

• Chip online: Root Android: advantages and disadvantages , from April 11, 2018

Individual evidence

1. ↑ N. Asokan, Lucas Davi, Alexandra Dmitrienko, Stephan Heuser, Kari Kostiainen, Elena Reshetova, Ahmed-Reza Sadeghi: Mobile Platform Security . Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2013, ISBN 978-1-62705-098-2 , pp. 42 (English, full text in the Google book search).
2. ↑ Stephan Verclas, Claudia Linnhoff-Popien : Smart Mobile Apps: With business apps into the age of mobile business processes . Springer-Verlag, November 27, 2011, ISBN 978-3-642-22259-7 , pp. 231–.
3. ↑ Rainer Hattenhauer : The Android smartphone: 10 lessons for beginners . Pearson Deutschland GmbH, 2011, ISBN 978-3-8273-3077-2 , pp. 274–.
4. ↑ c't editors: c't Android 2015: The practice guide . Heise Zeitschriften Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, January 20, 2015, ISBN 978-3-95788-030-7 , p. 127–.
5. ↑ Chip Online: Root Android: Advantages and Disadvantages
6. ↑ Guojun Wang, Albert Zomaya, Gregorio Martinez Perez, Kenli Li: Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing: ICA3PP International Workshops and Symposiums, Zhangjiajie, China, November 18-20, 2015, Proceedings . Springer International Publishing, November 18, 2015, ISBN 978-3-319-27161-3 , pp. 154–.