There is another aspect of the situation from the standpoint of the custom development community, whose interests we represent. Although we have only seen the good side of the situation, it is even worse from a security perspective when you consider the hundreds of lesser-known device models using these MediaTek chips.

Considering that, it is unknown why the Taiwanese chip design company still hasn't patched the flaw in its chipsets that allows defeating the chain of trust while flashing. If you remember, MediaTek chipsets were previously found to be susceptible to a dangerous rootkit nearly a year ago, and it was actively exploited by hackers to gain root access. In case you don't want to touch your primary operating system, you can make use of FireISO – a bootable GNU/Linux ISO designed specifically for this purpose. Linux users, on the other hand, need to apply a specific patch to the kernel. If you're running Windows, you have to install a libusb-based filter driver to override the default driverset.

It’s important to note that the exploit payloads require a specially-tweaked USB driver for a successful interception. The method, which makes use of SoC-specific exploit payloads, intercepts the pre-flash queries made by SP Flash Tool and forcefully set the values of two crucial parameters ('Serial Link Authentication' and 'Download Agent Authentication ') as false in order to continue the flashing process without any kind of authorization. Based on a boot ROM-exploit originally discovered by XDA Senior Member xyz`, developers Dinolek and k4y0z have come up with a generic bypass method, which is compatible with a wide variety of MediaTek-powered devices that would otherwise require authentication while flashing. Well, XDA's fantastic developer community has once again come to the rescue.

Sp flash tool mac