A couple of days ago, the God of exploits for Motorola phones Dan Rosenberg, released a new root exploit method for a couple of Motorola devices. Dan has always came to rescue when it’s about Motorola development. Motorola has very tight security measures applied on their devices while they are shipped from factory. It all started back in 2010 when they started locking their devices and since then it’s been very hard for developers to find security loopholes which could lead to root access and unlocked bootloaders.
A new OTA update was launched for the aforementioned devices which upgraded the Android OS version to 4.1.2 Jelly Bean and a large number of people were automatically unrooted during the process. All these people were left out in cold until Dan came up with this exploit. This exploit not only is for the mentioned devices but will also work for a variety of other Motorola devices (until Motorola patches it).
Let’s get rooted!
Disclaimer: Rooting voids warranty! Droidviews doesn’t undertake any responsibilty if you damage your device during the following process. You have been warned.
Before you Begin
- Rooting voids warranty, you can claim it back by unrooting your device.
- The explained method works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux based PCs.
- This exploit is for rooting the aforementioned devices running official 4.1.2 firmware provided by Motorola.
- Backing up your data is recommended, but not necessary.
Prerequisites
- Motorola Device Manager for installing your phone’s drivers.
- Root exploit toolkit
- One of the aforementioned devices running official Android 4.1.2 and charged above 70% to be safe.
Rooting Procedure
- Install Motorola Device Manager from the provided link, it will install the drivers for your device.
- Make sure your device gets detected after you install the drivers.
- Get the root toolkit and extract it somewhere easy to find, like Desktop.
- Turn on USB Debugging on your device:
Go to Menu-> Settings-> Scroll down and tap Development-> Check on USB Debugging - Connect your device to computer and make sure it is not connected in USB Mass Storage Mode, make it Media or Camera mode.
- If on a Windows PC, open the extracted folder and double click ‘run.bat’. If on a MAC or a Linux system, navigate to the extracted directory from the terminal and execute ‘./run.sh’
- Follow the prompt to complete the rooting procedure. Your device will reboot during the process so do not panic. Unplug your device after the procedure is done.
Make sure you are rooted properly by installing this free app from Google Play:
[googleplay url=”https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.joeykrim.rootcheck”]On a related note, Dan Rosenberg says it’s an end for Motorola development from his side and he will not continue his development further after this exploit as the exploits are getting harder and harder to be discovered. He urges people to buy unlocked devices if they want to play with their devices.
So I just tried this today and it did not work, I have the RAZR HD running 4.1.2. I tried it twice with no luck, the root checker says there is no root and superuser will not open because it says it is missing the binary for it.
Try updating superuser app from play store. This is working for many people out there.
I did try that, multiple times, but to no avail.
Hi Cory, there are 2 things that we can suggest you:
1. Repeat the procedure from beginning
2. Try following methods:
http://droidviews.com/2013/root-almost-any-motorola-phone-with-this-universal-root-method/
http://droidviews.com/2013/root-a-long-list-of-devices-with-just-one-click-via-framaroot/
I have tried repeating the procedure multiple times with the same outcome every time, the command prompt for the root will say failure and it will be unsuccessful. Those other two methods are more work than I feel like putting in to rooting my phone, however thanks for the effort.