The Status of WP8 Hacking

[Trevor Halsey]

Hi all,
There has been a large amount of work going on in the past 3 months that concerns hacking various WP8 devices.

It all starts with Hidden Apps via dial strings for WP8. This page contains any and almost all WP8 Dial Codes that span a large number of devices. That was my stab at WP8 Hacking, and its still growing.

The second is FFUMount Tool. It takes the ffu file (it's a file that contains everything for your phone for flashing/resetting) and shows you whats all inside of it. This has been around awhile longer, but its starting to become more useful as GDR2 ROMs are coming out and some aren't getting them.

The third is [XAP][Source] WP8 File Access Webserver v0.3.3. It allows a browser to remotely access files stored on your phone via WiFi. It shows the IsolatedStorage of the app and files inside the Windows folder on your WP8 device. It uses a non-conventional port, 9999 but still works. At the moment, it doesn't allow saving files to it yet.

The fourth is a library that is only useful for developers. [LIBRARY][SOURCE] WP8 Native Access project

The purpose of this project is to provide general-purpose libraries, usable from C++ or .NET, which enable access to the underlying functions of the OS. In some cases, this will mean simple wrappers around native APIs; in other cases, these will be more advanced operations which simplify using the low-level APIs.

The fifth is [XAP][SOURCE] Lumia Registry Modifier (now its WP8 Registry Tools). It allows a user to read and write (writing doesn't work on most things) registry values that are strings. It works on any WP8 device, but it was made for Lumia's originally. DWORD values can be viewed, but not edited quite yet.

The sixth and final tool is [XAP][SOURCE] Native Toast Notification Launcher. This will launch ANY app through a toast popup. This is mostly used for launching hidden installed apps left over by the phone manufacturers for diagnostic or similar purposes. It's also partially covered in the first link as well.

The Huawei Ascend W1 has been flashed with a "custom" rom by editing "hives?". As a note, I'm kinda behind on info about the W1. I don't know if anyone has gone public with any other full unlocks, so I can't vouch for that.

I'd though I'd help this community out by doing some crossposting, letting people know WP8 isn't as locked down as everyone thinks it is.
Does anyone here like this type of work? Or think this is newsworthy?

 

[Laura Knotek]

Have you tried any of these?

 

[diktea]

for a lay person like me..... i had no idea of what you just said, its all alien to me. but understood it can be hacked

 

[Trevor Halsey]

Have you tried any of these?

I have most of them installed. They work GREAT! I made the Hidden Dialer apps thread, and I've been contributing under my handle in my bio (thals1992). I use the toast launcher occasionally, but I believe I only use it when testing new dial codes. I can only have 3 apps installed at a time due to the MSDNAA/Dreamspark restrictions. Anyways, since the restrictions have been lifted anyone can install these apps once they have installed the WP8 SDK, or Windows Phone Power Tools. I haven't tried the WPPT thing, but I've heard some good things about it and other devs use it heavily.
Also the Windows Phone App Studio makes it easy to make an idea on pen and paper and transfer it to an app. It isn't quite that easy, but my Lumia Apps thing in my signature is pretty barebones. I'm currently working on a revamp, so it could take however long it takes to find everything for all the oems. I'm even thinking about integrating WP7 OEM stuff too, but I don't know if it can even be deployed to one.

 

[th0mas96]

what's even more interesting is the Ativ S engineering unit that someone on XDA has, and is willing to sell it to ultrashot (or not atm?!) who is responsible for most of WP7 hacking. If he gets that device, chances will be a lot better than now

 

[X0LARIUM]

Any way to enter the 'Other' Storage and clean it up? Cause it is really irking me.

 

[Trevor Halsey]

what's even more interesting is the Ativ S engineering unit that someone on XDA has, and is willing to sell it to ultrashot (or not atm?!) who is responsible for most of WP7 hacking. If he gets that device, chances will be a lot better than now

Unfortunately, he was minutes too late. It was sold to somebody on eBay, and we can't do anything about it. :sad:
At least we have the phone dump....

Sent from my RM-860 (Lumia 928) using the OFFICIAL Tapatalk app.

 

[th0mas96]

Unfortunately, he was minutes too late. It was sold to somebody on eBay, and we can't do anything about it. :sad:

At least we have the phone dump....



Sent from my RM-860 (Lumia 928) using the OFFICIAL Tapatalk app.

that's really sad.. but I think of ultrashot or someone else really thinks he can do a lot with it, they can get the info of the new buyer and make them an offer

 

[Trevor Halsey]

Any way to enter the 'Other' Storage and clean it up? Cause it is really irking me.

GDR2 is the real fix for the Other Storage issue.
Anyways, here are two apps in the Marketplace that kinda work.
The first is Shrink Storage
This app creates a file that grows until you phone is full. Then you need to reboot your phone and relaunch it. The instructions are on the app as well.
The second is Storage Cleaner
I haven't tried this one but, I've heard that it works better than the first.

 

[MSFTMatt]

I have been following this on XDA as well. I miss the Good'ol'days of windows mobile when you could do anything you wanted, but that is android now, and with the influx of malware on android I would rather WP8 and W8 RT hacking be restricted to people who can read and stays relatively complicated to keep the platform safe.

I am in transition learning server support and languages and coding vs help desk support so I am going to follow your lead and dive into Power Tools and the SDKs for some fun stuff to do on the side. Thanks for the heads up trevor!

 

[Trevor Halsey]

I have been following this on XDA as well. I miss the Good'ol'days of windows mobile when you could do anything you wanted, but that is android now, and with the influx of malware on android I would rather WP8 and W8 RT hacking be restricted to people who can read and stays relatively complicated to keep the platform safe.

I am in transition learning server support and languages and coding vs help desk support so I am going to follow your lead and dive into Power Tools and the SDKs for some fun stuff to do on the side. Thanks for the heads up Trevor!

I'm just annoyed that the only quality site with WP news is here. XDA will occasionally make an article about WP, but its only about the Hacking apps that I tip them off to. The worst part is that they don't even have forums all the WP8 devices.

 

[Trevor Halsey]

Well, apparently there's a new OEM Switcher that just popped up. It needs Fiddler, the .NET4 edition.
[EXE] Store OEM Changer 1.6
Also the registry thing does work on all WP8 devices, its now just called WP8 Registry Tools.

 

[Doohickie]

GDR2 is the real fix for the Other Storage issue.

What, exactly, is GDR2 supposed to do to fix Other Storage? I've loaded GDR2 onto my 8X and it doesn't seem to have any effect on Other.

 

[Robert Carpenter]

Nice to see you here thals. I made a thread on XDA when I was digging into the UIX/Iris framework, but I hit a road block.

The activity on XDA has been very high lately. I'm really hoping UltraShot, GD2D, and Snickler end up with a breakthrough.

 

[kbilly70]

Nice to see you here thals. I made a thread on XDA when I was digging into the UIX/Iris framework, but I hit a road block.

The activity on XDA has been very high lately. I'm really hoping UltraShot, GD2D, and Snickler end up with a breakthrough.

since switching from Android to WP I haven't spent much time on XDA. Nice to hear there is a higher level of activity and will check this out.

 

[thundr51]

Haven't been to Xda in quite some time but I guess it's time to go back. Thanks for the info Trevor, I have a dev license so I'll definitely have to give these a shot.

 

[Trevor Halsey]

What, exactly, is GDR2 supposed to do to fix Other Storage? I've loaded GDR2 onto my 8X and it doesn't seem to have any effect on Other.

I didn't notice a huge dent in Other Storage either. I'm currently sitting at 1.4 GB in other, where I have 11GB of music, 1.4GB of youtube videos, and 5.4 GB of Apps (Halo doesn't help) and 220MB of temp files.

Nice to see you here thals. I made a thread on XDA when I was digging into the UIX/Iris framework, but I hit a road block.
The activity on XDA has been very high lately. I'm really hoping UltraShot, GD2D, and Snickler end up with a breakthrough.

Nice to hear there is a higher level of activity and will check this out.

Yeah, it just started to spark when I asked about the dial string apps. Yep, even Heathcliff now has a 920, so things will be getting interesting quick.
The only thing is that we don't have hardware developers that could even attempt to find a method to turn off Secure Boot and BitLocker on these things.

 

[th0mas96]

I didn't notice a huge dent in Other Storage either. I'm currently sitting at 1.4 GB in other, where I have 11GB of music, 1.4GB of youtube videos, and 5.4 GB of Apps (Halo doesn't help) and 220MB of temp files.


Yeah, it just started to spark when I asked about the dial string apps. Yep, even Heathcliff now has a 920, so things will be getting interesting quick.
The only thing is that we don't have hardware developers that could even attempt to find a method to turn off Secure Boot and BitLocker on these things.

according to MS, they fixed the bug that xap's and other big files wouldn't get deleted. If that's true, it shouldn't increase way more..

 

[Doohickie]

I didn't notice a huge dent in Other Storage either. I'm currently sitting at 1.4 GB in other, where I have 11GB of music, 1.4GB of youtube videos, and 5.4 GB of Apps (Halo doesn't help) and 220MB of temp files.

I only have 8GB (well, 7+, but they round funny), but my storage numbers are comparable: Other is at 1.26, music+videos is only 890MB, 530MB of apps, and 170MB of temp files. I don't do any heavy gaming or anything like that, so my apps don't take as much space.

 

[Trevor Halsey]

More good news! The fileserver and the Registry viewer have been combined! Its still using the webserver, but more progress nonetheless!
Also for the use of the Native Toast Notification Launcher, there's an App GUID List!! for some of the apps that aren't in the app menu or hidden from the dialer.