Root arrives for Xperia Z3 owners with locked bootloaders

Are you a Sony Xperia Z3 or Z3 Compact owner with a locked bootloader? Have you been craving root access since you bought your handset? Well your prayers have now been answered as an exploit has been found that will root the handset, even if you have a locked bootloader. This comes courtesy of XDA dev zxz0O0 who has created the “giefroot rooting tool”.

The method involves plugging your Xperia device into your computer and running an extracted install.bat file. The one caveat though is that will only work on the older firmware build (23.0.A.2.93). If you are already on the newer build number (23.0.1.A.5.77), then you will have to downgrade your firmware using FlashTool/XperiFirm first before you can get root.



If you then want to upgrade to the newer firmware build post root, follow these instructions from XDA member serajr. If you want to backup your DRM keys, then use these instructions from XDA member graffixnyc.

We should highlight that people appear to be having mixed success getting this to work. So head over to this XDA thread and please read all of the steps carefully. Looks like zxz0O0 efforts will net him a well deserved $3000 bounty for discovering the exploit.