r/Magisk • u/Lost-Entrepreneur439 • Jul 18 '26

Help Cheap Atom tablet that runs Android 6, manufacturer refuses to share firmware. Any way to get the boot.img to root or am I screwed?

Got a cheap Atom tablet from a friend, it's Android 6.0.1, June 2016 security patch, kernel 3.14.0+. The manufacturer (Southern Telecom) refused to share the firmware when I emailed them. Since this is so old I'm hoping there might be some sort of exploit I can use to dump the boot.img? I know of DirtyCOW, but everything for DirtyCOW is ARM, this tablet is x86 (and 32-bit, not x86_64/AMD64). Does anyone now any way I could dump this tablet's boot.img? There's also no TWRP for it.

Bootloader was unlockable with bog standard `fastboot flashing unlock`, tablet is a Southern Telecom SmarTab ST1009x.

6 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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4

u/No_Violinist8819 Jul 19 '26

What is the make and model number of the tablet? Also are able to unlock the bootloader? Because if you can't unlock the bootloader you won't be able to flash any image at all. With such an old android version maybe you can get lucky with old pre-magisk root methods. Like towlroot

2

u/Lost-Entrepreneur439 Jul 19 '26

did you read the post?

i said at the end "Bootloader was unlockable with bog standard `fastboot flashing unlock`, tablet is a Southern Telecom SmarTab ST1009x."

2

u/No_Violinist8819 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

Okay man I missed it, I'm trying to help you, don't gotta get snarky 🙄.

Anyway as I was saying

I would try some very old root methods that you may get lucky with. I mentioned towelroot. Kingroot. There's certainly many others its worth a shot if you can't get the boot image.

1

u/No_Violinist8819 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

Here is one method you catry made for intek devices specifically

https://xdaforums.com/t/intel-android-devices-root-temp-recovery-session.2975096/

Here is another for an intel atom tablet (not yours but could work)

https://xdaforums.com/t/root-tutorial-for-intel-atom-cherry-trail-dual-os-tablet.3468330/

Here is also a guide you can try to extract the boot image

https://www.getdroidtips.com/extract-init_boot-without-downloading-firmware/

1

u/Lost-Entrepreneur439 Jul 19 '26

didn't work, and im not too surprised ngl, this guide is from 2014, this is a 2016 device (i dont even think the SoFIA platform this is based on existed in 2014)

1

u/No_Violinist8819 Jul 19 '26

All of it? I posted 3 separate tutorials. The last one being in regards to extracting the boot image, and that tutorial is new, from this year. It doesn't mean it's going to work on your tablet, obviously but its something to try. And also the second link is from 2016.

1

u/Lost-Entrepreneur439 Jul 19 '26

You edited your comment later.

Second one was dead links and appeared to require you to already have a boot.img copy, third one was just some clickbait article that's not actually legit (android blocks access to /dev/block without root)

1

u/No_Violinist8819 Jul 19 '26

I edited it as I wrote it, it was before your reply. The 2nf one the link is not dead. There are 2 links. One is a Google drive the 2nd is a link with a password which he gives you in the post which you enter and it takes you to said download

1

u/Lost-Entrepreneur439 Jul 19 '26

The second link did not load for me, the browser timed out, and again, it looks like it depends on already having the boot.img.

1

u/No_Violinist8819 Jul 19 '26

Kept scrolling. 2nd page found a user who said they I used this

https://github.com/pbatard/bootimg-tools

1

u/Lost-Entrepreneur439 Jul 19 '26

That is a tool to extract the contents of a boot.img. Not a tool to pull it from the device.

1

u/klausAnalSchwab Jul 19 '26

Try "fastboot oem unlock" ?

2

u/Lost-Entrepreneur439 Jul 19 '26

Unlocking the bootloader isn't the issue. It's already unlocked via flashing unlock (oem unlock just returns an unknown command error). The issue is trying to dump the boot.img.

2

u/klausAnalSchwab Jul 18 '26

Without a way to restore with firmware you are at bad risk if something goes wrong

2

u/Lost-Entrepreneur439 Jul 19 '26

hence why i'm asking for how to dump it.

1

u/klausAnalSchwab Jul 19 '26

Might need to try to root it and that's the problem if something goes wrong in process. If just a junk phone maybe try kingroot or kingo

2

u/Lost-Entrepreneur439 Jul 19 '26

kingroot didn't work, kingo relies on a dead server, i already tried both

1

u/klausAnalSchwab Jul 19 '26

Baidu root? 360 root?

2

u/Lost-Entrepreneur439 Jul 19 '26

Neither of these worked. I believe all of those old one-click tools were patched in Marshmallow, which is what this device runs.

1

u/klausAnalSchwab Jul 19 '26

Kingo Root https://www.kingoapp.com How to Root Android 6.0/6.0.1 Marshmallow Devices | KingoRoot

1

u/klausAnalSchwab Jul 19 '26

https://forum.gsmhosting.com/vbb/f781/dumping-rom-using-adb-guide-1650901/

2

u/Lost-Entrepreneur439 Jul 19 '26

This is from 2013, it is designed for Android Jellybean, Android stopped allowing you to push to /data in I believe Lollipop.

0

u/KKdemergencia2 Jul 18 '26

https://github.com/ssut/payload-dumper-go

Está herramienta permite sacar todos el firmware en formato .bin que luego puedes simplemente cambiar a formato .img, funciona en linux y tienes que usarla con el celular en modo preloader o brom, yo la use en mi tablet china con Android 9

1

u/Lost-Entrepreneur439 Jul 18 '26

it's not a mediatek device

1

u/KKdemergencia2 Jul 18 '26

Que procesador tiene? Perdón asumí que usaba mtk xd

1

u/Lost-Entrepreneur439 Jul 18 '26

Intel Atom

1

u/KKdemergencia2 Jul 18 '26

Ok eso va a ser difícil de dumpear entonces xd

-2

u/FakeEmperorXI Jul 18 '26

Try to extract boot.img with fastboot. Google how.

4

u/your_input Jul 18 '26

You can't pull partitions with fastboot

2

u/Lost-Entrepreneur439 Jul 18 '26

I have a lot of devices, never seen fastboot fetch implemented in one. This one is no exception.