Cracked by BiNPDA

Posts Tagged ‘Symbian’

Hint: If you use self-signed certificate, make sure that your application uses unprotected UID, i.e. 0xA0000000 – 0xAFFFFFFF. If you use protected UID (0×20000000 – 0x2FFFFFFF) or legacy UID (0×10000000 – 0x1FFFFFFF), you will get this message.

Hint: This message may come up when your installation file (.sis/.sisx) copies files to other application’s private folder, i.e. \private\uid. Note that Symbian 9 introduces data caging concept, it means you don’t have access to other application’s private folder.

Message: Expired Certificate

Hint: Do this…
Set the phone date back by 7-8months..

Message: Update error

Hint: Uninstall any previous version of the application, then switch on/off the phone and install again

S60 3rd Edition requires all Symbian applications to be signed, that’s one of the bigger changes that came with Symbian 9.1 operating system. This has led to some confusion among developers, who think they need to apply for a certificate (which costs money and takes time) even to be able to show a ‘Hello world’ on the screen. This was very confusing for me too for some time, but now I got it. Hope this helps somebody out there.

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Self signing with own certificate
To sign an application you can create your own private certificate, with the tools and instructions that come with S60 SDK. For step-by-step instructions, look for “How to Sign .sis files” on SDK docs folder (no online link, sorry). The catch is that even though your application will be installable, it’s still treated as ‘untrusted’ and has some limitations applied by the platform security. One limitation is that the application cannot get any capabilities other than those which are user grantable (ie. ReadUserData, WriteUserData, NetworkServices, LocalServices and UserEnvironment). I don’t really know how limiting those 5 capabilities are for real-life applications. What I do know is that some s60 apps are signed with a self-created certificate, and that application does stuff like read files and access network.

There are also some usability issues with self signed applications. The user will get an intrusive security warning (pictured below).

If you chooses to take the risk and Continue, he will be asked to confirm the capabilities that the application wants to use (pictured below). To me this dialog is not really understandable. Its purpose is to ask from the user, but I guess on the sake of usability there is no question but just Continue/Cancel choice. I don’t think an average user will understand what he just did after pressing Continue.

This was the default case for self signed applications. On some S60 devices (at least Eseries) there might be one additional step to make. There is a setting on Application manager that controls whether untrusted applications can be installed at all. If this setting is ‘Signed only’, there will be an error dialog shown and application won’t install (see below). The user needs to change the setting to ‘All’ to allow self signed apps to install.

That’s it about self-created certificate and signing. To make the picture full, I’ll mention the other options that lead to a ‘trusted’ application that can have more capabilities, and doesn’t ask anything from the user.

Freeware certification
Special route for freeware applications, that doesn’t cost anything but can take some time. More at Symbian Signed.

Symbian Signed certification
The “default” way of signing a commercial application. See more here. Cost is $350 /year for ACS Publisher ID and testing cost starting from 185€/round.

Self certification
The heaviest option for bigger developers, cost $10000 /year.

It was November 2005 when I first held my brand new Nokia Ngage QD and my journey to the world of symbian began. Before I bought NgageQD I had Philips 350 and boy that was a really bad phone. Learning from that experience I searched the internet for best mobile phones that won’t cost me too much as I was only a student at that time.

During my search to find good mobile I got introduced to series 60 world and after knowing some more I became a fan of s60 devices.
NgageQD was the cheapest s60 device available here in India at that time but I didn’t had even that much amount to buy it. Just for my luck my brother bought that phone for me as a reward to my help in managing his marriage party and also for my dance i did in the reception. Here a short clip from that dance attached at the bottom of post.

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After that time i was completely immersed in that phone and began to try and learn each and everything I do with that phone. I searched internet for hours to find new applications, trying them, getting bored up soon and searching again for more. It became my life and i was thinking 24×7 about the phone.

One thing to mention here that I had no computer at my home. I never had one and still don’t have any. I use Cyber cafes to do all the internet related stuff. Most of the cyber cafes have deep freeze installed in their computers that doesn’t allowed me to install PC suit or bluetooth drivers to install. I got another challenge and after doing some research I learned to crack deep freeze passwords. Then I was able to connect my phone to the computer.

After loading so many softwares to my phone ( most of them were cracked) I became fan of the (in)famous cracking group BiNPDA. Then I thought of cracking softwares myself and the searching began again to figure out “how to crack mobile softwares?”.

I found some tutorials ( written by 18+2) to read. I downloaded all the required softwares (IDA pro, winhex and others), learned the assembly language for ARM processor and reverse programming. But i never really cracked any software because I only wanted to learn and I couldn’t give so much time as I was a medical student and was in my M.B.B.S. final prof.

While searching for good apps I found two of the killer apps that changed my life. First one was not one app it was group of ebook readers like mobipocket reader, repligo reader, isilo reader etc and the second one was Opera mini. These two softwares let me get most out of my cellphone.

Having ebook reader 24 hours in my hand I got treasure of knowledge as I am a voracious reader. I used to find free and pirated ebooks load them to my phone and reading them from rising in the morning till dropping into sleep really late at nights. I read all types of ebooks like fiction ( Harry potter series. The Da Vinci code and all other books written by Dan Brown, my childhood favourite Robinsson crusso, lost world and others), self improvement books (Chicken soup series, The Alchemist, monk who sold his ferrari, etc.) many medical books and some programming books (HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Python, ASP.NET) and many more. I learned a lot from those books ( except from programming books as I cant do the practical stuff as I dont have a PC).

Opera mini was the most important software I found. It gave me access to the internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. I learnt lot from internet using my phone. I even made my first blog using opera mini.

I have read a long back that ” knowledge in any field never gets wasted”. By seeing my this knowledge of mine about mobile phones and internet my good friend DEV, who is owner of a cyber cafe now lets me use internet for free in return of the knowledge i share with him which i have learned from my Ngage QD and now my nokia N72.

If someone can help me dig more into this really amazing world of symbian and other mobile, feel free to contact me.

And thats my symbian story…