Amazon patches the exploit that supercharged Fire TV and Fire Tablet hacking

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Well it was fun while it lasted. Last month xda-developers forum members Pro-me3us unveiled a method for gaining system user privileges on Fire OS devices, giving users more control over the software that runs on their Amazon Fire TV devices and Amazon Fire tablets. Among other things, it allowed users to replace the default home screen and disable certain Amazon apps and services.

But the tools for doing that relied on a security vulnerability in Amazon's Fire OS software. And now it looks like Amazon has started rolling out a patch for that vulnerability, which means the latest hacking tools will no longer work on devices running the latest ve rsion of Fire OS.

Amazon Fire TV 4K Max

According to recent posts in the xda-developers forum, Amazon is confirmed to be rolling out a Fire OS 8.1.5.3 update for Fire TV devices for that patches the vulnerability. It's likely that a patch for devices running Fire OS 7 is also on the way, if it's not already rolling out.

While I haven't seen any re ports of new Fire tablet firmware that patches the vulnerability yet, it's expected to come soon. For now, if you're running Fire OS 7.3.3.1 or 8.3.3.6 or earlier, it should still be possible to change the default Launcher, keyboard, and other system-level apps, among other things.

The good news is that it takes a while for Amazon to push updates to all users – so if you've been meaning to hack your device but haven't gotten around to it, you might want to try seeing if media streamer or tablet is still running a vulnerable version of Fire OS.

And one of the things that the exploit allowed users to do was block over-the-air software updates. So if that hack worked the way it was supposed to, then users who have already used the exploit to block updates should be able to continue using Launcher Manager (for Fire TV devices) or Fire Toolbox (for Fire tablets) to make system-level changes to their devices.

via AFTVNews

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