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Engineer roots Amazon Fire HD 10 tablet using four AI models and $266 in API costs
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Illustration only Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash
An engineer bypassed Amazon’s locked bootrom to gain root access on an unrootable tablet using AI models for exploit discovery and execution.
This demonstrates AI’s growing capability to automate complex security research, reducing the barrier for low-level device control. It also highlights the fragility of vendor-enforced restrictions when users combine AI tools with persistence. The cost and effort required remain prohibitive for most, but the approach could scale if models improve.
Written by elseif from the cluster below · every claim links back to a sourceThe three things worth knowing
A known Mali GPU vulnerability (CVE-2022-38181) was exploited after an AI model identified it in the tablet’s kernel binary.
The process required $266 in API calls across four AI models, with one model handling the bulk of exploit development.
Amazon’s protected system packages were disabled post-root, preventing forced shutdowns by the vendor
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