FirefoxOS Hacking Part 1

Just when I though I had to clone back my blog and set it up again, it so happened that I have a backup on my PC. Yey! I can write a blog post! This time, it's a quick guide on setting up a FirefoxOS phone for hacking. For this post, I'll be on Windows and the victim is a Cherry Mobile Ace. So hang tight, this will be a quickie!

Setting up

• Install Firefox Aurora (rebranded as the "Firefox Developer Edition")
• Install the "15 seconds ADB Installer"
• In C:\Users\[username]\.android\adb_usb.ini, append on a new line 0x1782. This is the hardware ID of the handset. The file adb_usb.ini might not exist in .android. If so, just create it.

Prepping Your Device

• Disable sleep via Settings -> Display -> Screen timeout
• Disable screen lock via Settings -> Screen lock -> Lock screen
• In Settings -> Device Information -> More Information -> Developer Settings
  • Check "Developer Menu"
  • Set "Remote Debugging" to "ADB and Devtools"
  • Check "Console enabled"

Connecting Your Device

• Plug in your device.

• Press WIN + R and type cmd.

• In the cmd, type adb devices. If your device was detected by your PC, the result should be:

  List of devices attached xxxxxxxx device

• Open Firefox Aurora, and press SHIFT+F8 to open WebIDE

• On WebIDE is a dropdown labelled as "Select Runtime". Click and select your phone from the list.

Creating Your First App

• On the top left of WebIDE, go to Project -> New App.
• Select the "Hello World App" and enter a project name.
• Select a save location for the project.
• Once done, you'll be presented with an IDE with files on the sidebar, and an editor.

Development Workflow

• To run the app, just click on the "Play" button (sidewards triangle icon) on top.
• While running, clicking on the wrench will open the very familiar Firefox Dev Tools.
• Clicking the "Stop" (the square icon) will kill the app.

Why Another Blog Post?

Originally there was this blog post which was the only guide I found. It was misleading at first, thinking that it was just a review of the phone. At the bottom of the post was a link to the driver and setup information. Unfortunately, the driver won't install on Windows 8. I once VM'ed the setup on XP but this wasn't a healthy routine, both for development and my machine.

Up next...

Making the phone do some intensive stuff. Spoiler: I won't be rooting the devices or modifying the ROM (though I'm really itching to do so). This is so that I'm sure it would work on the devices out of the box.