The cat-and-mouse game between Android device manufacturers and the hacking community never ends, but depending on how aggressive an OEM decides to be, they can make it virtually impossible to crack open a device for custom ROMs — look no further than HTC's secure bootloaders, for instance, prior to the company's decision to start permitting unlocks. As the Nook Color before it, Barnes & Noble's Nook Tablet makes a prime candidate for hacking because it's exceptionally well-built and well-equipped for its price, but the unit's secure boot process makes it a challenging venture. As usual, of course, the community has come through — and this one's wild: an xda-developers member has figured out how to effectively bypass the tablet's secure boot process using another hardware-based hack that allows you to make bootloader changes through a terminal interface. It's one thing to code around a locked ROM... it's quite another to tear apart your tablet and break out the soldering gun, but it's believed that the end solution should be unpatchable on Barnes & Noble's end. The next step? ROM development, hopefully including a good Android 4.0 install.