[clug] AllWinner kernel backdoor

Chris Smart clug at christophersmart.com
Fri May 13 00:33:09 UTC 2016


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/09/allwinners_allloser_custom_kernel_has_a_nasty_root_backdoor/

This is interesting because a lot of device manufacturers will just use
the AllWinner kernel as is, so this silent backdoor will be present for
years to come.

They've since silently deleted the debug code off their github pages,
however forks still have the history there, so you can see it here:

https://github.com/csmart/linux-3.4-sunxi/blob/master/arch/arm/mach-sunxi/sunxi-debug.c#L41

The code was added on 2015-06-26 at 7cc9a8fff679f by kevin.z.m with the
commit message:

	update kernel tree:

	1. fix some gpl issue;
	2. release some source code;

It looks like part of the GPL compliance issues the company has been
facing.

It was the 8th commit that AllWinner had done on their Linux fork, and
this one in particular added some 176,417 lines of code.

-c




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