date: 2014-12-07T12:49:54+00:00 title: Replicant 4.2 0003 images release authors: Paul Kocialkowski tags: Replicant images release, Paul Kocialkowski licenses: CC-BY-3.0 OR CC-BY-4.0 --- It has been about 6 months since we last released a batch of images. A few things of interest were completed in the meantime, so we are rolling out new images today. This release doesn't bring support for any new device: instead, it mostly contains stability fixes for the devices we already support. The most considerable change in this release is the inclusion of the Samsung-RIL rewrite, that was developed this summer. [Samsung-RIL][1] is the component in charge of dealing with the modem, the hardware chip that communicates with the mobile telephony network. The code that was used since then didn't have a good structure and didn't meet the code quality standards required to call it stable or reliable. The rewrite should be more robust and fail-proof: it has been tested daily on a couple of devices for the past few months, with no major incident to report. The Samsung-RIL rewrite has about as many features supported as the previous version, with the exception of a few ones that were broken anyway (mainly, USSD and STK). The new code establishes a sane basis for external contributions, so everyone is welcome to dig in and add support for what's missing. Another big achievement in that release is the inclusion of about a dozen security fixes, covering issues such as Shellshock, Master key, Fake ID and much more, thanks to reports by community members. As usual, you can checkout the complete [changelog][2], download the images from the [ReplicantImages][3] page and find [installation instructions][4] as well as [build guides][5] on the [Replicant wiki][6]. Even though this release doesn't introduce support for any new device, I have been at work regarding devices that make the best candidates for freedom and privacy/security. As mentioned in [an earlier post][7], we are going to focus the development effort on a few devices that allow running free bootloaders and are either likely to have good modem isolation or don't have a modem at all. Recently, I have been working on adding Replicant support for [Sunxi devices][8]. There is a lot of work to do in that area and while nothing was released yet, it looks promising. I also spent a considerable amount of time working on the LG Optimus Black (P970)'s bootloader. I will be posting [a series of articles][9] about what an incredible journey it has been so far on [my personal blog][10] over the next few days. Eventually, the device will be properly documented in our wiki and as soon as U-Boot reaches feature completeness, it will be time to start porting Replicant to the device! **December 20th update:** The full series of articles about freeing the LG Optimus Black (P970) is now available: * [A hacker's journey: freeing a phone from the ground up, first part][9] * [A hacker's journey: freeing a phone from the ground up, second part][11] * [A hacker's journey: freeing a phone from the ground up, third part][12] * [A hacker's journey: freeing a phone from the ground up, fourth part][13] [1]: [2]: [3]: [4]: [5]: [6]: [7]: [8]: [9]: [10]: [11]: [12]: [13]: