Xiaomi Mi Router 4A Gigabit Edition (R4AG/R4A Gigabit) -- fully supported and flashable with OpenWRTInvasion

I got a bunch of dumps right here, because I flashed 20+ devices this way. So it should be no problem, to send you one of them.

But the problem could be, that the mac-address of your device would change to that one in the dump.
Also I don´t know, if there is some kind of device-specific calibration data in the dump of if calibration processes are done while booting the device (I think I read something about calibration in the console while the device was booting...).

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Can you upload a dump somewhere please? :slight_smile: or even better, two or three dumps, so we can compare them and check what you are saying about the mac address.

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Of course - any suggestions for a hoster to choose?

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MEGA
media fire

Ok ... just used that one... I think it should not matter :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

https://anonfile.com/n8P8Tajfo2/R4AG_R4A_spi-flsh_dumps_zip

It includes 10 dumps, as I said I got some more if you need them. (Could not access them right now.)

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I can run the exploit on firmware 2.28.26 (sorry it is 2.28.62)

https://pastebin.com/kgLUpKPn

after flash openwrt, wifi not activated,

connect lan port, ssh to machine, opkg install luci and done.

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Firmware 2.28.26 is the only one officially released by Xiaomi, right? The one that is in Chinese?

EDIT: also I see in your log that the version you are running is 2.28.62, not 2.28.26.

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thank you mirror link to your file:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ueyz7zd7q6ys1ex/R4AG%26R4A_spi-flsh_dumps.zip/file

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I am realising now that the exploit may be useful to install OpenWrt in other Xiaomi routers and firmware versions

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yes yes yes and Y E S !!!!!

Thanks @acecilia and your team

Question: Is there any newer/stable version that we can use ?

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The snapshot image is daily built from the latest code, so it is the newest out there. For a stable version you will need to wait for the next OpenWrt release

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I added a mention to the new method in the wiki, in https://openwrt.org/toh/xiaomi/mir3g#xiaomi_mi_wifi_r3g_mi_wifi_router_3gmir3gmi3gr4a_gigabit/

I also added it in https://openwrt.org/inbox/toh/xiaomi/xiaomi_mi_router_4a_gigabit_edition.

I am a bit confused about why the information for this router is spread around two different wiki pages.

Thanks all for your help! :rocket:

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Very strange .... again.
It's not working for me.
Yes, I get root access
Yes, I can overwrite OS1

But: after rebooting, the router changed it's MAC address (only the last digit differs from the previous MAC)
I can ping, but there are no open ports (checked with nmap) and also there is no wifi.
I had to bootp and flash 2.28.62 image with chinese UI.
Fortunately I made a backup of OS1- and overlay-partitions, so I was able to restore it to 2.28.132 with english UI.
I tried several things, including factory reset before flashing openwrt, but always the same. The router comes up with a different MAC and not access at all.

Any ideas?

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download latest snapshot for mir3g-v2 from here : ( xiaomi_mir3g-v2-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin)

http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/ramips/mt7621/

after flashing openwrt you need to ssh to router and install luci then enable wifi from settings.

1.ssh root@192.168.1.1
2.opkg update
3.opkg install luci

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Hello,
it is also possible to directly install the openwrt image to the flash image.

Readout the image from flash with:
ch341prog -r readout_image_from_mir3gv2.img

Install OpenWRT with dd on the image:
dd if=openwrt-ramips-mt7621-xiaomi_mir3g-v2-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin of=readout_image_from_mir3gv2.img conv=notrunc bs=1 seek=1572864

Erase flash with:
ch341prog -e

And write the modified image back:
ch341prog -w readout_image_from_mir3gv2.img

5 Likes

That sounds great for me !!!
So I could save a lot of time, because until now I was dumping with flashrom, enabling bootmenu-delay within the dump, reflashed the patched dump, tftp-booted OpenWrt and then did the sysupgrade.

Could you tell me how you found out the right start-position (seek=1572864)?

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I analysed the binary with binwalk:

DECIMAL       HEXADECIMAL     DESCRIPTION
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
97696         0x17DA0         U-Boot version string, "U-Boot 1.1.3 (Feb 22 2019 - 06:43:39)"
98248         0x17FC8         CRC32 polynomial table, little endian
524288        0x80000         JFFS2 filesystem, little endian
1572864       0x180000        uImage header, header size: 64 bytes, header CRC: 0x6056EBF4, created: 2019-02-22 06:51:44, image size: 1856070 bytes, Data Address: 0x81001000, Entry Point: 0x813ECCE0, data CRC: 0x1522C879, OS: Linux, CPU: MIPS, image type: OS Kernel Image, compression type: lzma, image name: "MIPS OpenWrt Linux-3.10.14"
1572928       0x180040        LZMA compressed data, properties: 0x6D, dictionary size: 8388608 bytes, uncompressed size: 5458688 bytes
2705694       0x29491E        COBALT boot rom data (Flat boot rom or file system)
3473408       0x350000        Squashfs filesystem, little endian, version 4.0, compression:xz, size: 11349156 bytes, 2236 inodes, blocksize: 262144 bytes, created: 2019-02-22 06:51:40
15204352      0xE80000        JFFS2 filesystem, little endian
2 Likes

Just tried it out now, and it seems to work well :slight_smile:

I wrote a shell script. I use flashrom instead of ch341prog, but I think its easy to modify for those who want to use ch341prog.

##!/bin/sh
timestamp=`date "+%Y%m%d_%H%M%S"`
start=`date +%s` #for calculating runtime
dir=$(pwd)

function exit_error () {
	printf "Error @ line:\t%i\n" "${BASH_LINENO[-2]}"
	#removing files
		cd "${dir}"; rm -r "bkps/${timestamp}";
	show_runtime
	exit 1
}

function check_error () {
	if [ $? != 0 ]; then #The return value is stored in $?. 0 indicates success, others indicates error.
		exit_error
	fi
}

function show_runtime () {
	end=`date +%s`
	runtime=$((end-start))
	printf "\nruntime: %s seconds\n\n" ${runtime}
}

#create folders 
	mkdir -p "bkps/${timestamp}"; cd "bkps/${timestamp}"; file="${timestamp}_dev-dump"

#create dumbs
	printf "\n\n\n ***** +++++ ***** creating dump-files ***** +++++ *****\n"
	flashrom -p ch341a_spi -c GD25Q127C/GD25Q128C -V -r "${file}Nr01.bin"
	check_error
	#2nd dump-file
	gpio write 2 0; sleep 2; gpio write 2 1; sleep 1 #Powering ON SPI_header-VCC
	flashrom -p ch341a_spi -c GD25Q127C/GD25Q128C -V -r "${file}Nr02.bin"
	
#compare dumps
	hash1=$(md5sum "${file}Nr01.bin" | cut -f1 -d" ") # only get the hash value
	hash2=$(md5sum "${file}Nr02.bin" | cut -f1 -d" ")
	if [ "${hash1}" = "${hash2}" ]; then
		printf "hashs are identical - continue\n"
	else
		printf "hashs are different - please retry reading the flash.\n"
		exit_error
	fi

#patch file
	#enable bootdelay
		sed 's/\x62\x6F\x6F\x74\x64\x65\x6C\x61\x79\x00\x00\x00\x6F\x66\x66/\x62\x6F\x6F\x74\x64\x65\x6C\x61\x79\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x35/g' "${file}Nr01.bin" > "${file}Nr01.bin.patched"
	#write openWrt into dumpfile
		wget "https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/ramips/mt7621/openwrt-ramips-mt7621-xiaomi_mir3g-v2-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin"
		sysupgrade_file="openwrt-ramips-mt7621-xiaomi_mir3g-v2-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin"
		dd if="${sysupgrade_file}" of="${file}Nr01.bin.patched" conv=notrunc bs=1 seek=1572864 status=progress
		check_error
		rm "$sysupgrade_file"

#flash file
	printf "\n\n\n ***** +++++ ***** flashing patched file ... ***** +++++ ***** \n"
	flashrom --noverify -p ch341a_spi -c GD25Q127C/GD25Q128C -V -w "${file}Nr01.bin.patched"
	check_error
	printf "\n\n\n ***** +++++ ***** device succesfully patched! ***** +++++ *****\n"

#print runtime
	show_runtime

I could put the script in the wiki, if you think it could be useful?

2 Likes

@acecilia Thanks for the exploit.
I successfully managed to install OpenWrt on 2 new Mi router 4A 100 (Non gigabit version) running firmware 2.18.51

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@acecilia Thanks again for the exploit.
Successfuly installed on Xiaomi Router 4A 100M (R4AC) running firmware 2.18.58

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