TOWELROOT

[andu86]

Hi all,

there is a new app for rooting phones, the name is Towelroot and it was made especially for Verizon Glaxaxy s5 but the dev says that every phone with kernel build date < 3 June can be rooted.

With this app you can root Galaxy S4 Mini with kitkat firmware without tripping knox counter. It will stay 0x0 and you will have root access.

First of all you must put a vulnerable kernel with build date <3 june

you can grab one from [INDEX] Official Stock KERNEL collection for Galaxy S4 Mini (Kernel for I9195XXUCNF7 is the one you have to grab to work with towelroot, offcourse if you own an i9195 )

Flash it via odin. Leave everything intact and load the kernel to AP.



After the phone boots, install towelroot, press makeitra1n and you are rooted.

Next step is to install SupserSU from google play.

After all the above steps are done, flash the kernel from your firmware the same way as you did it the first time.

There you go, knox 0x0 and root access.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2783157

 

[96DANGER96]

Download link?

Inviato dal mio GT-I9195 utilizzando Tapatalk

 

[Aronuser]

Download link?

Inviato dal mio GT-I9195 utilizzando Tapatalk

http://towelroot.com/

click the logo and save as

 

[vriz27]

just tried it.rooted successfully the phone in 15 seconds.the bad thing is that I've already tripped Knox warranty so I cannot tell if it stays 0x0.I'm on latest 4.4.2 stock

 

[N0Ntoxic]

 

[tobbbie]

just tried it.rooted successfully the phone in 15 seconds.the bad thing is that I've already tripped Knox warranty so I cannot tell if it stays 0x0.I'm on latest 4.4.2 stock

Ooohhh - this is tempting
towelroot did not work for 4.2.2. latest stock for my German device. Can you tell which is your firmeare and if German is a supported language?
I think KNOX should NOT be tripped if you only upgrade to official FW (i.e. kernel and recovery builds have valid checksums) - so how did you get KNOX tripped earlier - for CWM based rooting?

 

[vriz27]

I have latest official stock 4.4.2. which I think is for Belgium,but as far as I know it's the only one that has already came out. German language is fully functional and supported. I live in Greece and Greek language is also supported. I think that official Roms are multilingual

 

[tobbbie]

I have latest official stock 4.4.2. which I think is for Belgium,but as far as I know it's the only one that has already came out. German language is fully functional and supported. I live in Greece and Greek language is also supported. I think that official Roms are multilingual

How can you be sure that the root explot worked from towelroot and not from your actions earlier tripping KNOX?

You have already a custom recovery and custom ROM - this would not be possible without bootloader having KNOX triggered. So I guess that with this price paid you have already rooted the "regular" way - didn't you?

---------- Post added at 06:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:21 PM ----------

Another thing with upgrade is that you may loose your installed apps.
I remember this from my first steps with Xperia Ray some years ago, but this could also have been due to unlocking the bootloader and installing a custom kernel. Back that time I was not so knowing about what should be done in the process of unlocking bootloader, CWM recovery install and finally rooting. I may have scratched data partition that time without knowing what it actually means - and without it being needed as well.

Is this the case here as well? Non-root means no Nandroid backup and so what happens to the data-partition in this process?

---------- Post added at 06:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:29 PM ----------

Finally to all who want to dare testing:

It is highly unlikely that KNOX would be tripped here. As far I understand the process of image integrity that KNOX tries to maintain, the booloader checks if the image checksum of the kernel or recovery partition is intact - at upgrade time (not runtime at boot?). The towelroot exploit is compromising kernel security (aka "exploit") with some instructions (lib\armeabi\libexploit.so) to gain root and retain that state across the re-boot process. I am not aware of the details how this can be achieved (this is real high-tech hackery) - but the towelroot exploit does NOT install SU on system partition yet - this has to happen in a second step - and failed with 4.2.2 stock ROM on my GT-I9195.

So if there is anyone out there with just upgraded 4.4.2 and confirmed non-rooted - please check if you can get root with this method!

EDIT 20140705: Towelroot does NOT make the reboot in case of successful root. It gets you root in the same session immediately after you click "make it ra1n". So there is no reason why/how KNOX could be tripped. I did root my device with this method and still have KNOX intact (I just checked again to be sure). I have in the meantime made some changes to the /system folder, e.g. removed the photo-click sound, freed some space by removing the japanese language files for text-to-speech (gives you 25MB) and inserted all the updated system apps back to the system (did not ODEX them and removed classes.dex from the .apk - so they are all larger than the ODEXed originals). Also I moved out Google+ from System to be regular app.

 

[vriz27]

How can you be sure that the root explot worked from towelroot and not from your actions earlier tripping KNOX?

You have already a custom recovery and custom ROM - this would not be possible without bootloader having KNOX triggered. So I guess that with this price paid you have already rooted the "regular" way - didn't you?

---------- Post added at 06:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:21 PM ----------

Another thing with upgrade is that you may loose your installed apps.
I remember this from my first steps with Xperia Ray some years ago, but this could also have been due to unlocking the bootloader and installing a custom kernel. Back that time I was not so knowing about what should be done in the process of unlocking bootloader, CWM recovery install and finally rooting. I may have scratched data partition that time without knowing what it actually means - and without it being needed as well.

Is this the case here as well? Non-root means no Nandroid backup and so what happens to the data-partition in this process?

---------- Post added at 06:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:29 PM ----------

Finally to all who want to dare testing:

It is highly unlikely that KNOX would be tripped here. As far I understand the process of image integrity that KNOX tries to maintain, the booloader checks if the image checksum of the kernel or recovery partition is intact - at upgrade time (not runtime at boot?). The towelroot exploit is compromising kernel security (aka "exploit") with some instructions (lib\armeabi\libexploit.so) to gain root and retain that state across the re-boot process. I am not aware of the details how this can be achieved (this is real high-tech hackery) - but the towelroot exploit does NOT install SU on system partition yet - this has to happen in a second step - and failed with 4.2.2 stock ROM on my GT-I9195.

So if there is anyone out there with just upgraded 4.4.2 and confirmed non-rooted - please check if you can get root with this method!

well maybe i wasn't so clear. i was on CM m7 snapshot,then flashed through odin the samsung's 4.4.2 firmware. after that my root privilages were gone(as i presume,flashing the new firmware formats system,and installs new one) and i was left with plain stock firmware. checked with root checker,tried with titanium,tried with ES file explorer to remove anything from system partition but this was a no-go. so NO root after installing 4.4.2. installed towelroot,run the app and after 15 or so seconds,the phone rebooted and root privileges were back on! track!
with ES and Titanium i removed all of the knox related stuff with absolutely no problem. i read in the towelroot app's that SU app is not installed and i manually installed it from chainfire's thread. that's all i did.
the knox warranty 0x1 was triggered loooooooooong ago, and thankfully i haven't need the waranty for the time being...
hope it helps :laugh:

 

[luisbraz]

There are several testimonials that this don't trip KNOX on S5.

 

[KumailHyderMirza]

just tried it.rooted successfully the phone in 15 seconds.the bad thing is that I've already tripped Knox warranty so I cannot tell if it stays 0x0.I'm on latest 4.4.2 stock

4.4.2? ?

 

[vriz27]

4.4.2? ?

 

[Bullet92]

Here are some screenshots for those who don't believe KNOX is not triggered:

 

[androitri]

What about Verizon S4 mini, anyone can confirm it.

 

[comaX13]

This doesn't work for me. It just reboots my phone. It's an unbranded european S4 mini LTE.
I'm on 4.2.2 and I read before someone couldn't root with it on 4.2.2, and I'm not sure I can update it to 4.4.2 because
1) I tried flashing it before and it says i have an unofficial rom (or kernel, can't rememebr which) which in the end I don't have... edit "updates are not available because your device had been modified".
2) I'm not sure the update has rolled out for France. Edit : It hasn't, according to Sammobile. Only Belgium. I'll try to update through Odin and get back to you. In the mean time, feel free to make any suggestion to resolve the issue! Thanks

 

[fburgos]

This doesn't work for me. It just reboots my phone. It's an unbranded european S4 mini LTE.
I'm on 4.2.2 and I read before someone couldn't root with it on 4.2.2, and I'm not sure I can update it to 4.4.2 because
1) I tried flashing it before and it says i have an unofficial rom (or kernel, can't rememebr which) which in the end I don't have... edit "updates are not available because your device had been modified".
2) I'm not sure the update has rolled out for France. Edit : It hasn't, according to Sammobile. Only Belgium. I'll try to update through Odin and get back to you. In the mean time, feel free to make any suggestion to resolve the issue! Thanks

You have to upgrade with Odin.

But don't do it if you're in the old bootloader

sent from my i9192 with CM11 by sekil

 

[andu86]

This doesn't work for me. It just reboots my phone. It's an unbranded european S4 mini LTE.
I'm on 4.2.2 and I read before someone couldn't root with it on 4.2.2, and I'm not sure I can update it to 4.4.2 because
1) I tried flashing it before and it says i have an unofficial rom (or kernel, can't rememebr which) which in the end I don't have... edit "updates are not available because your device had been modified".
2) I'm not sure the update has rolled out for France. Edit : It hasn't, according to Sammobile. Only Belgium. I'll try to update through Odin and get back to you. In the mean time, feel free to make any suggestion to resolve the issue! Thanks

if it says that the updates are not available because your device has been modified, it means that you are rooted. you have to install supersu separretly.

this exploit was meant for all kernel built before 3 june, so it will work on your device.

 

[killov1982]

Dear friends, now we have learned to put ROOT using TowelROOT without a computer, and that's a great application with which you can easily install and Rekoveri kernel (Kernel and Recovery) in the form *. Img files. You can also do a pre-backup.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.mkrtchyan.recoverytools


Sent from my GT-I9190 using XDA Free mobile app

 

[ondoy1943]

Towelroot with GT-I9192

No go for my i9192 having jdq39.i9192ububnd2 build. :crying:

 

[kev23m]

I have gone back to the stock firmware and this did not work. Baseband - ddu1bml1