[HH] jailbreaking the Netgear NTV300 set top box

[Tom Metro]

jailbreaking the Netgear NTV300 set top box
http://www.devttys0.com/2012/10/jailbreaking-the-neotv/

This article provides a pretty good illustration of the technique where
you extract code from a firmware image, disassemble it, and examine it
to find vulnerabilities that can be used to jail break a closed appliance.


The hak5 people demonstrate how to employ the above jailbreak:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLW5y1tjAOzI3UZhSSa9RsYa4onxSfHJ1p&feature=player_embedded&v=yRUE59i4WJo#!


I'm not sure why one would bother hacking a device like this, given that
there are dozens of similarly speced and priced appliances on the market
that don't need to be broken in order to load your own OS or customize.
Maybe I'm missing something and this hardware is special? A "Mediatek
ARM SoC, a 128MB NAND flash chip and 256MB of RAM" doesn't sound special.

Sure, hacking can be fun for its own sake, but when you have a choice to
buy an open alternative, you should vote with your wallet.

 -Tom