In May, Jay Freeman aka saurik, founder of Cydia, released Substrate and Winterboard for Android.

Few days back, pod2g, a key member of the evad3rs dev team said that he was so disappointed with iOS 7 features that he was about to switch to Android.

The good news is that the trend of iOS hackers showing interest in the Android platform continues as famous iPhone and Playstation hacker George Hotz aka Geohot has just released a tool to root Samsung Galaxy S4 Active aptly called Active Root.

Geohot has a history of discovering exploits in iOS firmwares and is famous in the iPhone hacking world for releasing popular jailbreaking and unlocking tools such as blacksn0w, blackra1n and limera1n. He is also credited for being the first person to carrier unlock an iPhone. However, he left the jailbreak community after a not so pleasant experience.

Users have to visit the Active root webpage on Geohot’s website on their Galaxy S4 Active, tap on the Lambda symbol to download and install the apk file. And then run Active root and follow the on-screen instructions to root the device. You can follow this link for the step-by-step guide.

Justin Case, security researcher who has discovered quite a few vulnerabilities in Android says that Geohot has used a known exploit in Active root. So it is not clear if Geohot will get the $455 bounty that was up for grabs for the person who roots the device.

The exploit from geohot for S4 active is not new, its the perf event vuln that was hit https://t.co/O4vh1vXqJj and http://t.co/ewE0xzvBFD

— Jon Sawyer (@jcase) July 2, 2013

If you’ve a Galaxy S4 Active then let us know how it goes in the comments.

via xdadevelopers