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I'm saying that the flashing/side-loading is the back door. A malicious actor with physical access to your phone (think screen repair shop, TSA agent, etc) coul
by martingordon 11y ago
I'm saying that the flashing/side-loading is the back door. A malicious actor with physical access to your phone (think screen repair shop, TSA agent, etc) could flash a compromised OS or install malware on your device.
Also, there a lot of not-savvy people who will follow instructions in a well-crafted email or pop up and allow themselves to succumb to spyware and malware.
- vezzy-fnord 11y agoI'm saying that the flashing/side-loading is the back door Next you'll be saying compilers are backdoors, too. That's not what the term "backdoor" means. A malicious actor with physical access to your phone Stop. Physical access means all bets are off.
- martingordon 11y agoI should have been more clear. I was using Tim Cook's statement as an analogy for flashing/side-loading. Allowing good guys to do it means bad guys can do it too. Tricking a user into side-loading malware does not require physical access to the device and is relatively common on the Android side (more so on third-party stores).
- bestnameever 11y agoMy last few Android phones have wiped themselves before allowing me in a state where I could flash a modified version of android.
- kbenson 11y agoWell, it's a good thing we have Apple's track-record to show us it's impossible to break out of these walled gardens, otherwise we'd really be in trouble if someone got physical access to our phones. https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/Jailbreak https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/Jailbreak
- martingordon 11y agoFair enough. I used to keep up with jailbreaks way back before I started buying unlocked phones and had read about difficult-to-crack OS versions (and the as-of-yet unjailbreakable 3rd generation Apple TV), but I wasn't aware that it was still this pervasive.
- muddi900 11y agoWhile I hate the economic stifling of tech innovation that is the App Store culture, I would like to point out that Jailbroken iphone were used by the Chinese government to target protesters in Hong Kong quite recently.
- kbenson 11y agoMy point is that stating that side-loading is a back-door that can be abused when your phone is in someone else's possession ends up not being a very good argument when that actually ends up being the harder way to accomplish getting software onto the phone, considering side-loading is both password protected (if your phone is) and still doesn't expose functionality beyond what the OS allows (unlike jail-breaking).
- lern_too_spel 11y agoThe device clears user storage before allowing you to flash a new OS, so that isn't an effective way to compromise a user's data. Application installation requires unlocking the device, so the ability to sideload doesn't give an attacker any meaningful ability over installing from an unscanned app store like Apple's.
- muddi900 11y agoThe device is wiped of profile data and logins. You files are intact and accessible through a file explorer. It is a very restricted and time consuming method to access a device.