Kindle Jailbreak in 2024

[hexhexhex]

Originally Posted by mergen3107

Nope. You get JB once on a firmware. Then if you get updated, you need to restore it. That’s why people try to prevent OTA so that JB won’t break.

That's what I thought; so I'm still confused how you "restore" a JB after upgrading from 5.16.2 to 5.16.3, without a public 5.16.3 JB.

bear with me, I haven´t had my daily coffee

[mergen3107]

Current JB has preventative mechanism to stay alive.

However, you can still kill it for good if you do two firmware updates in a row, or two factory resets in a row, or any combination of these two.

If by the end of these two operations you end up on 5.16.3 and above, game’s over (hntil next JB method releases)

[hexhexhex]

Originally Posted by mergen3107

Current JB has preventative mechanism to stay alive.

Ahhh there's magic coming from the JB itself! I'll look into it to try and figure it out. Thanks

[mergen3107]

The file you are looking for is called fixup. It lives in /var/local/system/ after JB

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by hexhexhex

Maybe I'm coming from a baremetal perspective where DFU usually mean a total reflash of the postupdate active partition.

Kindles don't have factory reset (flash original firmware), they have plain reset, which resets all configurations to default, clears all the sqlite databases in /var, and erases all user data in /mnt/us, which is the partition exported over USB mass storage.

The essential effect of the jailbreak process is to get a community developer key into /etc/uks, which can only be done by exploiting some vulnerability. Over time, functionality was added to squirrel away the ability to restore the developer key during a restart (reboot) after a firmware update or a reset. If an update is followed by a reset without a restart, or vice versa, bye bye jailbreak.

The developer key is needed because only packages signed by a key in /etc/uks can be installed. Of course, once USBnetworking or a terminal emulator is installed, / can be mounted rw long enough to put anything you want anywhere you want.

[hexhexhex]

Originally Posted by mergen3107

The file you are looking for is called fixup. It lives in /var/local/system/ after JB

Thank you!

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Kindles don't have factory reset (flash original firmware), they have plain reset, which resets all configurations to default, clears all the sqlite databases in /var, and erases all user data in /mnt/us, which is the partition exported over USB mass storage.

The essential effect of the jailbreak process is to get a community developer key into /etc/uks, which can only be done by exploiting some vulnerability. Over time, functionality was added to squirrel away the ability to restore the developer key during a restart (reboot) after a firmware update or a reset. If an update is followed by a reset without a restart, or vice versa, bye bye jailbreak.

The developer key is needed because only packages signed by a key in /etc/uks can be installed. Of course, once USBnetworking or a terminal emulator is installed, / can be mounted rw long enough to put anything you want anywhere you want.

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

[ereader_User]

Originally Posted by jlinear

FYI: I just bought a new Kindle Paperwhite 11th gen yesterday on sale at Target with the hope of jailbreaking it. CCCC numbers were 4146 so manufactured this year. It had firmware 5.15.x.x (can't remember last digits). I was able to jailbreak it using LanguageBreak after updating to 5.16.2.1.1.

Edit: By the way I had plenty of time to register it and turn on Airplane mode before it updated. So I can download Amazon content using USB downloads, convert to epub and read using Koreader.

Did you bought the kindle with ads or without ads?
If with ads, can you use the book covers as wallpaper in Koreader after jailbreak?

[pongsak]

Originally Posted by ereader_User

Did you bought the kindle with ads or without ads?
If with ads, can you use the book covers as wallpaper in Koreader after jailbreak?

I'd tried if before, no.

[Marek]

Originally Posted by ereader_User

Did you bought the kindle with ads or without ads?
If with ads, can you use the book covers as wallpaper in Koreader after jailbreak?

Yes you can

[shamanNS]

You can, but you need to add an "user patch" that overrides the default KOReader behavior.

[avni]

JB PMed

[jlinear]

Originally Posted by ereader_User

Did you bought the kindle with ads or without ads?
If with ads, can you use the book covers as wallpaper in Koreader after jailbreak?

It was with ads. Just tried it. Yes, book covers show up when I suspend from Koreader. I use a nightly version if that makes a difference. I don’t remember installing any patches.

[aero31aero]

Probably a very stupid question, but once you have 5.16.2 jailbroken, do most tinkerers then attempt to jailbreak 5.16.3 or would they jump to, say, 5.16.10?

I have friends who bought new Kindles and I couldn't warn them of these jailbreak things before (I said buy a Kobo but here we are) and now I'm researching on their behalf how to get them on KOReader haha.

[BionicGecko]

Originally Posted by aero31aero

Probably a very stupid question, but once you have 5.16.2 jailbroken, do most tinkerers then attempt to jailbreak 5.16.3 or would they jump to, say, 5.16.10?

I have friends who bought new Kindles and I couldn't warn them of these jailbreak things before (I said buy a Kobo but here we are) and now I'm researching on their behalf how to get them on KOReader haha.

It's always better to stay on a lower firmware if one hopes to jailbreak his Kindle at some point in time. Amazon patches exploits as they finds them, so it gets progressively more difficult (and less likely) to have a jailbreak come out which works on later versions.

Also, as a general rule, hacks like this tend to work only on a lower firmware than the latest one; the reason for this is that many hackers choose to give a heads up to the vendor before releasing the exploit, giving them a chance to patch it before the exploit becomes public. I'm not familiar enough with the release timeline of previous Kindle jailbreaks to tell whether it's historically been the case for the Kindle, but it's often like this on other platforms.

If your friends are interested in jailbreaking their device, they should stay on whatever firmware they are on now, by keeping the device in airplane mode; with some luck, it will be supported by any new jailbreak method coming out.