Researchers gain root privileges on Oculus Quest 2, allowing them to bypass Facebook's login procedure. While the social media company's latest VR headset and platform forcing account logins has been controversial, this recent development is a promising step toward finding a way for researchers to circumvent it on their own.

A post on Ready Hacker 1 by Kavya Pearlman, founder of the XR Safety Initiative (XRSI), explains how researchers gained root access to Oculus Quest 2. It also explains that this has been verified by researchers at XRSI, who are currently working to "gather assurances to protect individuals who discover these jailbreak methods."

XRSI is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting privacy and security in XR (virtual reality, mixed reality, augmented reality).

The latest virtual reality device from Facebook, the Oculus Quest 2, was launched just before the announcement from the social media company that a Facebook account was required to use the VR platform. This in itself caused many users to shy away from this headset offering and go elsewhere, but even for users willing to log in using Facebook, it was far from a perfect execution.

Multiple logins and banned accounts caused headaches for some users, but Facebook has promised to fix these issues in future updates.

There is still a long way to go from this root access bypass to a simple and quick solution for enthusiastic users. So if you want to avoid Facebook, you'll need to check out one of the many options listed in our Best VR Headsets guide. After all, even if you bypass Facebook login with Quest 2, you'll still be buying Facebook products and increasing its coffers.