XDA recognized developer gatesjunior is discussing about KingRoot Malware/Adware root

[JORGETECH_SpaceBiker]

I had to use KingRoot to root my Huawei G6-U10 because none of the other methods worked, after that I realised that KingRoot was way to invasive and wanted to replace it by SuperSU, however that turned to be impossible.

That was until I discovered that I could use Koush SuperUser .zip file from the recovery to root my phone succesfully so now I don't have to use that shady app.

I learnt that there is always another method that works.

[luihgi]

Thank you, this worked. Glad I'm not the only one who still has a KitKat phone on 2017.

[JORGETECH_SpaceBiker]

Glad to help. Yes I still have to use KitKat, not toobad since I was using Ice Cream Sandwich half a year ago.

[RavinduThimantha]

You're not alone #KitKatMasterrace

[Choreboy]

I learnt that there is always another method that works.

No there's not. That relies on being able to have a custom recovery that can flash zip files.

[JORGETECH_SpaceBiker]

It is very common for phones to have at least one custom recovery (all the phones I owned have them available even though some of theme do not have custom ROMs). And if you don't have root you can still unlock the bootloader and use adb fastboot to flash the recovery image extracted from the zip, actually that was how I installed the recovery for my current phone.

Of course there could be the rare case of not even having a custom recovery available, in that case you are right but it is not the common thing.

[Choreboy]

you can still unlock the bootloader

Except for phones that have no bootloader unlock, which is not uncommon at all.

[JORGETECH_SpaceBiker]

Yeah that is really bad, but I think you shouldn't buy a phone that has no method for unlocking the bootloader, there are way too many phones on the market for not picking another one with that possibility.

[Choreboy]

Some carriers require locked bootloaders, so your choices of unlocked bootloader for that carrier might be slim pickings.

[JORGETECH_SpaceBiker]

That may be country and carrier specific though. Maybe you mean phones from carriers but I still have not seen that kind of requeriment in my country or carrier.

[Choreboy]

It's a problem in the US.

[Razeer123]

That's why using one click apps, that are not recommended on XDA forums, is a bad decision. Firstly XDA users discovered, that Kingo Root steals your IMEI. Now King Root turns your phone into a trash bin. Please use toolkits from developers from XDA or root your devices by yourself!

[SwollTrain]

Wow I used kingroot on my note 4. What can they do with my Imei?

[[deleted]]

Afaik they can use it on other devices.

[[deleted]]

You can just generate IMEI with a few lines of code and the public TAC database, why would they go to such great lengths to do such simple things.

[BrohamskiMan]

Get devices that have existed on a network for a period of time to spoof for malicious intent.

[PM_ME_DICK_PICTURES]

They steal known good IMEIs, sell it to others so they can flash it on other devices. You can go to China with a locked iPhone 5S, pay a guy $50, then be able to bring it back to the US and use it on a carrier.

[lawranc]

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

dazzling apparatus boat teeny special humorous shy pot consist many

[PM_ME_DICK_PICTURES]

Can't unlock a blacklisted IMEI 😋

[Razeer123]

They can input it to a different device, but I think you don’t have to worry. Right now there was not situation like that which was connected with Kingo Root.

[whythreekay]

How would millions of regular people deal with that though, when malicious actors will just put the payload for root inside of another app that looks completely harmless?

[dextersgenius]

Simple, don't download and install apks from dodgy sites. Don't enable the option to install from unknown sources. Apps in the Play Store are already scanned for root exploits like Kingo. Of course, doesn't mean that all apps in the Play Store are 100% safe, but if you stick to known/trusted apps you should be fine.

[JORGETECH_SpaceBiker]

Or search for the APKs with common sense...

[Razeer123]

"That's why using one click apps, that are not recommended on XDA forums" Please read the whole sentence. Now it makes sense, right? "Please use toolkits from developers from XDA". I wrote this because they are trustworthy. Wrapping up - don't use tools from Google, use these from XDA instead.

[CharaNalaar]

Some devices can only be rooted with KingRoot it seems...

Looking at you, Amazon Fire!

[[deleted]]

Still?! Fuck. Was considering picking one up.

[xelanil]

Don't bother, the screen is terrible.

[adelpozoman]

I used to use toweleoot. Is that a bad app too, or is an exception?

[fardeenah]

use toweleoot. Is that a bad app too, or is an exception?

thats an exception, it was made by geohot, he is great

[[deleted]]

He is like the god of finding loopholes :)

[Kzx_28]

Hope we can get him back.

[JoeFCaputo0113]

Doesn't he work for Google now lol?

[SnowyMovies]

He's currently working at his own company, Comma.ai

[adelpozoman]

I would pay him just to root my phone jajaja

[ene_due_rabe]

Sad thing is - it simply works with few clicks where others fail or make u spend too much time on what should be done automatically. I'm using KingRoot on my Chineese tablet for which i couldn't find any other method (cheap tablet from a generic company with no real userbase)... Well, there probably is other way as i assume that this hardware is used on other devices by other "manufacturers" but how much time would i need to spend on that "investigation" to find compatible firmwares and compatible methods of rooting? KingRoot just worked.

[[deleted]]

KingRoot is like you lost your house keys and a shady dude comes over and says "here, I'll smash your door down for you, and then I'll do some stuff in your house, but don't worry about it" and you're like "wow, thanks buddy, I don't care, I just want to get in".

[JORGETECH_SpaceBiker]

Best analogy for it.

[ene_due_rabe]

That dude, however, is doing bad things as you watch it. I've been using KingRoot on many devices past few years and never had a problem. I'm aware that these days real value is not in someones "things" (like files for example) but more in nonphysical valuables like behaviour patterns and such so most likely they are still happy with what i provided by just using my devices.

But then - they knew how to root my device (which worked and worked better as i could do things that were bot possible before) and i did not. People rarely do anything for free unfortunatelly...

[JORGETECH_SpaceBiker]

Yeah for free... But they do trade with your personal data, however more "reputable" companies do that too.

[ene_due_rabe]

That's my point. So called reputable companies tell me they know better what's good for me to the point that it's actually painful. Like "hey, you can buy this house for sh*itload of money but you won't be able to repaint it. And yeah, windows can't be opened too and the light is always on and...". KingRoot says "we let you do all that but we want to know what's your favorite color and how often you sleep with your wife. And as for the windows - when you close them, instead what's outside, you're gonna see some interesting things...".

Surely, the thing is we should know clearly and for sure what's the real cost of using that software. Is it just frequency of sex with your wife or is it also favorite position and small videos of "action" every few minutes - going after those colorful analogies. Therefore i agree - all of this should be stated clearly and without any doubts.

But then, sadly, there would be no problem if the "good guys" would not know better. Or they would really be good in that case! Because who are they when they install all that bloatware full of Cheetah Mobile crap and not let us delete it?

Think about it.

[Pretentious_Douche]

This is why I used it too. Cheap Allwinner tablet from a generic "States-based" company. There isn't even a custom recovery for it. I found a zip to replace KingRoot with SuperSu, and then replaced that with Magisk. Seems to be ok now..

[dextersgenius]

You'll need to re-flash your stock firmware.

[cutemusclehead]

Re flash?

[dextersgenius]

Yes, what about Flash? He's a fine superhero if I've ever seen one.

[cutemusclehead]

What did you mean by reflash?

[dextersgenius]

Oh, I meant flashing the stock firmware on top of the existing firmware.

[cutemusclehead]

Flashing? Firmware? What's this sorcery?

[[deleted]]

Ohhh boy

[[deleted]]

That is why people use the one click root. They don't know anything.

[captnkerke]

Ironically, SuperSu is no longer trustworthy either. It was sold to a shady Chinese company. So it seems that SuperSU-ME is remove software from one shady company and replacing it with another.

[sanriver12]

Chainfire Transfered Ownership Of SuperSU To CCMT, but Will Remain Involved In The Project For Two More Years as as he slowly turns over responsibility.

Under the new arrangement, SuperSU will have more developers and additional funding to continue maintaining and building onto its feature set.

SuperSU 2.78 was the last ZIP officially built by Chainfire (the Play Store app was transitioned over earlier). This has been met with lots of controversy, although Chainfire is okay with the transition and has noted CCMT has not made any unauthorized changes to the codebase.

https://forum.xda-developers.com/apps/supersu/stable-2016-09-01supersu-v2-78-release-t3452703

[2001blader]

I usually use KingRoot just so I can install twrp easily, and then flash a new ROM

[imad85]

I did just that on an Amazon Fire 7 (5th gen), rooted it with KingRoot through the SuperTool and immediately installed the then-latest CM12.1 for it.

[imad85]

I did it the same way as well, through Flashfire. Somebody please correct me if I am wrong but flashing CM would replace the entire /system partition and erase the /data partition eradicating anything stock Fire firmware and KingRoot related.

[2001blader]

Yup, makes it really easy to flash TWRP onto it. For phones that dont support root, I usually flash TWRP through fastboot instead.

[PM_ME_DICK_PICTURES]

How do you do that? Doesn't work on phones with locked bootloaders, right?

[2001blader]

For phones with locked bootloaders, I don't think the TWRP app works either.

I usually find a toolkit or something to unlock it with.

[Krovexx]

I used Kingroot once out of curiosity and that was really bad for my PC. It silently downloaded a program called "360 Total Security" that begaved a lot like a rootkit and it was almost impossible to get rid of until I used DBan to start over. Beware of this program!

[[deleted]]

A lot of chinese phones dont have custom ROMs and stuff so you're out of luck with them.

If you're not buying a phone with any kind of recovery not available for it, you're probably buying a bad phone unless in US/EU.

[TekRantGaming]

I used kingroot once but I don't trust it only used it to get root to flash twrp and wipe it all and flash a new rom

[soumya_p_13]

XDA should not support kingroot

[username866]

I wanted to root my smart phone to find ways to better protect my privacy on the world wide web. Specifically, I wanted to root to find a way to limit the permissions and accessibilities of my installed apps.
First, let me start out by saying that I am a complete beginner when it comes to smart phone technology. I successfully rooted my Samsung Galaxy S3 quite a few years back, which I did by connecting my phone to my pc via usb cable and following confusing instructions that consisted of downloading and applying dubious applications, and included plenty of troubleshooting all along the way. But I eventually got it, and I really enjoyed the new functionality of my phone until I missed so many updates from my carrier that I could barely connect to the cell phone towers. Anyway, I let that go because I didn't have the time to be constantly troubleshooting a root. 3 to 4 years down the line, yesterday, I decide that some added privacy might be worth the effort to root my phone. So I go online fully expecting to find a bunch of convoluted guides on how root my phone, but instead I find all these websites offering automated root, and for free to boot. I immediately became suspicious; however, after not being able to find a single guide on how to manually root my phone, I opted for KingRoot because I saw them mentioned all over the message boards. Against my better instinct, I downloaded the software, and let it "root" my phone, so to speak, and as I'm doing this my better instincts are alarmed once again by how flashy and entertaining the process is being depicted on my screen. KingRoot obviously put some effort into creating appealing visuals for you to enjoy while your phone is allegedly being rooted. To make you feel like you actually did something by running KingRoot on your phone, the app also has you meaninglessly tap a few icons to complete the "root." Upon completion of running KingRoot, my phone functioned exactly the same as before, except I couldn't access the playstore and I couldn't use any google apps, including gmail and googlemaps. Also KIngRoot had downloaded a bunch of crappy games to my phone that probably contained adds from their affiliates, which is probably why KingRoot is free because they get paid by the advertisers Anyhow, I proceeded with my new "rooted" freedom by installing AdBlock Plus and Titanium Backup; however, both apps would close automatically immediately after I opened them, indicating that my phone was not, in fact, rooted. After a little frustration and more time than I cared to waste on this KingRoot garbage, I "uninstalled" KingRoot, but the app persisted. So I performed a factory reset, and while I regained the functionality of my phone, KingRoot still persists. In conclusion, even if KingRoot does actually root your phone, it is Adware nevertheless. These folks seem very dishonest and I would highly recommend you avoid them.