Google's Chromecast Already Exploited

Released this past week by Google alongside Android 4.3 and the new Nexus 7 tablet was the Chromecast, a $35 device to essentially relay web-pages and video content from your PC or mobile device to an HDMI TV. The Chromecast has now been exploited so a root shell is accessible.

The Chromecast is a nifty device as it costs only $35 and works with any HDMI-enabled display while being powered off USB and communicates over WiFi. Android/iOS devices can beam video content to the Chromecast (such as Netflix) or you can also enable any web-page to be shown via the Chrome web-browser on a desktop PC. It's really an interesting device especially due to its low price point.

GTVHacker.com has already managed to find a software exploit on the less than week old device. Their exploit will create a root shell on port 23 by using a modified boot-loader for the hardware, which turns out to be a single-core Marvell ARM SoC.

The software stack Chromecast runs on is for Google TV but with the Dalvik/Bionic code stripped away.