PW2 How to hack a brand new Kindle PW2 (leaving it unregistered)

Hi all,

I had some difficulties hacking my first Kindle Paperwhite 2nd Gen (aka PW2) to the point I totally bricked it (even after unbrick it once).

So, as a shortcut to the newcomers, I compiled a small primer guide to hack your Kindle PW2 before registering it, so Amazon will never know about your reading habits, which I think is fair.

BIG RED NOTE: This guide is neither comprehensive nor complete nor definitive. You can help me to complete it by providing more details/information in this thread. There are catches and one is going to still read a lot of information to get it done right. There are things that don't work and one will loose functionality by doing it. Consider all this carefully before proceed. Do it at your own risk as I'm not responsible for anything bricked by YOU.

BIG BLACK NOTE: I'm not the author of any of the tools needed to complete these instructions. We, the community, owe a big THANK YOU VERY MUCH for all those intrepid and devoted developers that allows us to choose. In any case, do it at your own risk as none of these developers are responsible for anything bricked by YOU.

BIG MAGENTA NOTE: This guide applies only to Kindle Paperwhite 2gen, aka Kindle PW2, with 5.4.0 firmware. In any case, do it at your own risk as none of these developers are responsible for anything bricked by YOU.

That said, let's get it done.



Now you can go and install some neat KUAL extensions, here ('So what can you do with this?' spolier) and here. Just in case someone mess with my PW2 network settings, I've installed dsmid's BackDoorLock, knc's1 BBB Firewall. To speed up KUAL sorting, I've also installed gawk.

As I said earlier, there are some caveats. The main ones, imho, are:

• As the fake registration hack don't work at this moment on PW2, the cover view shows the 'register now blah, blah, blah', which takes the entire lower half of the screen, lefting less space to your shiny covers. Workaround: use list view;
• As the set date and time hack don't work at this moment on PW2, the time and date of you Kindle is going to be messed up. It's ok to me as it is a reader, not a server. Workaround: none.
• Wikipedia definitions doesn't work at all. No network. Workaround: connect to the network, so, in what matter to this post, none;
• All the network features are unavailable. This renders impossible to use cloud sync and all Amazon's bells and whistles, including their thirst for information, which for me are all defective by design, not features. So I can't care less if someone comes with an workaround for those ones.