TechHive: Chromecast hack reveals Google TV at its heart, not Chrome OS

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thumbnail Chromecast hack reveals Google TV at its heart, not Chrome OS
Jul 29th 2013, 14:40, by Jared Newman

Google's Chromecast only began shipping at the end of last week, but the hacking has already begun.

The folks at GTV Hacker have discovered an exploit for the Chromecast's bootloader, allowing root access to the $35 TV dongle. With the USB image provided by GTV Hacker, rooting the Chromecast is just a simple seven-step process.

Most Chromecast users will want to hold off on hacking their dongles, since there are no practical applications for the rooted device right now, and Google could patch the exploit at any time. The purpose of the current exploit is to learn more about the Chromecast and to give developers a chance to test their software.

To that end, GTV Hacker claims that the Chromecast is "more Android than ChromeOS," despite Google's claims that Chrome is at the heart of the device. The software appears to be a modified version of Google TV, derived from the same bootloader, kernel, scripts and binaries, and Google TV itself runs a customized version of Android. The big difference with Chromecast is that it lacks the Dalvik virtual machine architecture found in Android devices.

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