
The idea of these vulnerabilities is simple if we sum it up with some shortcuts.ĭevelopment devices cannot have the same security constrains because that would mean that Microsoft has to sign every binary developers compile to test their software.
WINDOWS SURFACE RT GOOGLE CHROME WINDOWS
My Surface RT under Windows showing a Secure Boot warning (in French) in the right bottom corner Unfortunatly the original website is down but some archives and instructions can still be found on the XDA developers forums. These vulnerabilities are known collectively as the Golden Key vulnerability. I got interested in Surface RT jailbreak when 2 guys (my123 and slipstream) from Ring of Lightning released the details of 2 vulnerabilities allowing to disable Secure Boot: But the path to this goal is quite tricky.
WINDOWS SURFACE RT GOOGLE CHROME INSTALL
When the support of Windows RT has been dropped, an obvious choice would have been to install Linux on it and to enjoy the vast amount of Linux software supporting ARM. But here is the catch: the Surface RT is an alien in the Surface landscape (along with the Surface 2) and the support for Windows RT has been quickly dropped as the next generations of Surface go back to x86.Īlso, for these models, Microsoft decided to lock the device: Secure Boot that cannot be disabled by the user, very specific hardware, user software digital signature required, lack of Windows applications supporting ARM, etc. Relying on a Tegra 3 T30 SoC, it runs natively Windows RT 8.0 (and 8.1). Yes! Something that Microsoft made is still resisting hacking after 8 years of life! (but you'll see that this is not for the good reasons) The Microsoft Surface RT is an ARM version of Microsoft's Windows tablets released in 2012. You'll see that getting something else to work on it is quite a challenge. I've got a Surface RT since late 2013 and never got to use anything else than the crippled Windows RT 8.0 on it. Stay tuned! The problem with the Surface RT This article will be (maybe) followed by a conclusion to this story that I followed for 5 years. Let's dive a bit into the current state of the art.

At the best, the community (including me) was able to boot into an EFI version of Grub.īut for the past weeks a major breakthrough is reviving the hope in me to at last use the Surface RT. Until now, nearly no one got to boot Linux on the Surface RT using it. I have been following the Surface RT jailbreak community since the discovery of CVE-2016-3287 and CVE-2016-3320 (aka Secure Boot Golden Key vulnerability). For more information, go to OpenRT's gitbook: Warning: this post does not reflect the current state of the art of Linux on Surface RT.
