On Wednesday, July 24th Google launched the Chromecast. As soon as the source code hit we began our audit. Within a short period of time we had multiple items to look at for when our devices arrived. Then we received our Chromecasts the following day and were able to confirm that one of the bugs existed in the build Chromecast shipped with. From that point on we began building what you are now seeing as our public release package.

Exploit Package:
Our Chromecast exploit package will modify the system to spawn a root shell on port 23. This will allow researchers to better investigate the environment as well as give developers a chance to build and test software on their Chromecasts. For the normal user this release will probably be of no use, for the rest of the community this is just the first step in opening up what has just been a mysterious stick up to this point. We hope that following this release the community will have the tools they need to improve on the shortfalls of this device and make better use of the hardware.

Full story here:
Chromecast: Exploiting the Newest Device By Google. (GTVHacker)

Additional comment: These devices might be a lot more useful to some of us if someone could figure out how to 1) Add a wired network connection, 2) Add an optical audio output for those of us with older receivers (that don’t have HDMI connections) and TVs (that don’t pass audio from a HDMI port back to the receiver). They’re obviously selling these to the low-income crowd, so why would they not assume that you might want to connect this to perfectly good but slightly dated equipment that requires optical audio, or maybe even to a large screen computer monitor that doesn’t have any audio capabilities?

Additional additional comment: If the XBMC developers could create an add-on that would emulate the Chromecast device and in effect turn XBMC into a Chromecast receiver WITHOUT the need for the Chromecast dongle, that would make us VERY happy!