Having fun while learning about and pivoting into the world of DFIR.
by ogmini
A few weeks back, I picked up a used Pixel 7 to use as a testbed to learn Android forensics. The intention is to root the phone, start poking around, and see where it leads me. Larger goal is to start contributing to ALEAPP. I specifically picked the Pixel 7 as it is a popular phone with a bootloader that is easily unlocked.
For now, I’ve been reading up on how to go about rooting the phone on the XDA Forums. I’ll add the silly disclaimer that if you attempt any of this you are on your own and I bear no responsibility. It appears the general steps of rooting a Pixel phone are:
init_boot.img to the phoneinit_boot.img back to the phoneI will probably use a tool called Pixel Flasher from badabing2003 at https://xdaforums.com/t/pixelflasher-a-gui-tool-for-flashing-updating-rooting-managing-pixel-phones.4415453/. There is also a Pixel 7 specific thread at https://xdaforums.com/t/pixelflasher-for-google-pixel-7-support-thread.4505289/. It is just a matter of getting the time and confidence to give this a shot.
On another note, I had opened a PR for ALEAPP to add support for extracting third-party IMAP emails from the default Gmail application back in this post. Happy to say that is was merged recently - https://github.com/abrignoni/ALEAPP/pull/590. This served as a little bit of motivation to jump back on this Pixel 7 project.
tags: #Android #Root