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Once root access has been obtained, the user is in complete control overthe phone. In particular, they can replace the operating system with a customversion of Android. This is accomplished by replacing the recoveryimage [59], an alternate firmware present in all Android devices which thestandard Android bootloader can boot instead of the main Android system.The standard recovery image allows very few operations, such as resetting thedevice to factory defaults and installing approved operating system updates.Alternate recovery images, such as ClockworkMod [17], allow additional operationssuch as taking complete system backups and replacing the entireoperating system from a ZIP file on the SD card. Installing a modified versionof Android is accomplished by storing the new version in a ZIP file onthe SD card, booting the recovery image, choosing to install a new operatingsystem, and selecting the ZIP file.A few Android devices allow the user to replace the recovery image withoutfirst rooting the phone, using a method called fastboot [58]. When infastboot mode, instead of booting from the built-in memory, the phone waitsfor commands from a PC attached via USB. The accepted commands includeone for writing a new recovery image to the phone. However, only afew old phone models and models targeted towards developers enable fastbootby default [65]. For the majority of Android phones, using the fastbootmethod would require first rooting the phone and using the elevated privilegeto install a new bootloader which allows fastboot.3.7 Community distrubutions of AndroidIn order to make Android a successful platform for diverse devices, Googlemade it open source [74]. In particular, they chose to license the sourcecode for the system under the Apache License 2.0 [44] as far as possible[73]. This license is approved as an open source license by the Open SourceInitiative [89] and as a free software license by the Free Software Foundation[88]. The Android Open Source Project [11] distributes this source code andprovides compliance test suites for ensuring that any modifications still meetthe Android specifications.16

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