Samsung phones in North America have been stuck with locked bootloaders for the longest time. This means no TWRP, no stable root, and no ROMs. Luckily, some great developers have been able to make workarounds in the past, and the Galaxy S7, Galaxy S8, and Galaxy Note 8 have all had unstable, but working, root. That stopped with the Galaxy S9 because of a lot of changes Samsung had made to their then Samsung Experience system to make it impossible. Thanks to Forum Moderator/Recognized Developer Elliwigy, we now have a proof of concept root on the Snapdragon Galaxy Note 9 using the Samsung factory binary.
Most of the previous Samsung devices have required exploits or bugs in the bootloader that allowed for flashing modified files through Odin. This newest root uses modified init scripts put into a read/writable folder in the newest Samsung factory binaries. This allowed for elliwigy to inject SuperSU and busybox to the system. Essentially, this means you get a fully rooted factory binary. The issue with this is the factory binary itself.
A factory binary a firmware used by Samsung for testing hardware and repairing software. It doesn't have a fully working modem, Google services, phone dialer, messaging app, or any other app that makes a phone a phone. Using the factory binary means you lose most features that would make this root useful. That's why this is a proof of concept. Elliwigy said he "Released it in hopes some more experienced devs can figure out how to root stock." Elliwigy wants developers to work on this root for a stock system so that it can become actually useful and more than a proof of concept.
Root for North American Samsung users is always hard to come by. Having anything close to a full root makes us hopeful for the future of Samsung's development. If you are willing to install and test this root client, Elliwigy has instructions on how to install this on your own device. It's good to reiterate that this is not stable and not made to use daily. This is supposed to be used specifically for development.