Below is my experience with rooting and flashing a newer ROM on my Verizon Wireless Samsung Galaxy S4. Thanks to a recently discovered kernel exploit (both scary and awesome) rooting was the easy part. Thanks to the encrypted bootloader on my phone and the KitKat update which made it impenetrable (at least for now) getting a new ROM on the phone was a little more difficult. Thanks to rootjunky.com for the informative video guide.

1. Root the phone with towelroot.
   Simply navigate to the site, click the lambda to download the towelroot APK, then copy to your device and install it.
2. Install SuperSU from the Google Play store
3. Install Android Terminal Emulator
4. Set selinux to permissive mode
   Open terminal editor and type the following:
   su
   setenforce 0
5. Install busybox
6. Install Safestrap 3.72 (the ATT version works fine)
7. Reboot into safestrap and backup the current ROM (optional, but recommended)
8. Install ROM of choice via Safestrap on the Stock ROM slot (other slots don’t work as of this writing.)
   I chose the hyperdrive ROM
9. Flash safestrap KitKat module to fix Wireless functionality
10. Remove “Press and Hold to add items to launcher screen” by dragging a widget from one screen to another

Success.