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Jailbreaking RabbitOS

(The Hard Way) By David Buchanan, 16th July 2024 I assume by now that most people have heard of the Rabbit R1. Critics unanimously agree that it sucks, and some have accused the company of deliberate deception.

In this article I'll outline the boot process of the R1, and how (and why) I subverted it to create a"tethered jailbreak" that gives you a root shell on otherwise-stock firmware, all without unlocking the bootloader or making any persistent changes to internal storage. After the headlines caught my attention, I started reverse-engineering a copy of the APK that I found floating around the internet (yes, "RabbitOS" is just an app running in a kiosk-like mode on Android 13 AOSP). Credit where it's due, this was a very quick turnaround, and it's the first time I've seen Rabbit being even slightly proactive with regards to user privacy and security issues, as opposed to merely reacting to news articles written about them.

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