4 ms·

If the interconnections are limited to the extent said off-the-shelf hardware just can't have privileged access to the other parts of the system, it's safe. Tha

If the interconnections are limited to the extent said off-the-shelf hardware just can't have privileged access to the other parts of the system, it's safe. That said, it doesn't matter if modem is hacked if it can't do much. Backdooring an MCU so it'd allow access on a secret code from anywhere is surely possible in theory, but it'll be hard to hide the cost of adding such backdoor.

dogma1138 11y ago
The baseband can be compromised, the SOC can be compromised, the OS can be compromised, the SIM card can be compromised, and more importantly the base station it self can be lawfully and unlawfully accessed. The safe part is in theory, there are only a handful of companies that could actually audit a mobile system in any effective matter pretty much all of them are also the vendors of various mobile interception, tracking, and exploitation solutions. Dealing with any type of security requires you to identify and quantify your threat agents, if your threat agents are a foreign or a national intelligence service of any note i wouldn't bet anything on the N900 nor on any other cellphone. If you ask anyone, layman or expert what is a secure device that the NSA could not hack the only thing that they might come up with is a brick, and i wouldn't even trust that[1]. At best the N900 might give you some reliability that when it's off and when the radio is turned off it's actually off, considering that sleep mode power consumption can vary by quite a bit in the same SOC based on conditions like temperature it wouldn't surprise me if you could fool that as well. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
- drdaeman 11y ago
  Everything can be backdoored, but what about costs? If the interconnection between the baseband and SoC is restricted in a way baseband can't just do DMA requests and mess with the system, the compromised baseband has to talk to the the compromised SoC to compromise the OS. NSA have to either develop a specific backdoor for a specific device (or, better say, schematically similar devices group) and hook into their supply chain (hmmmm...), or develop a quite cost-adding generic backdoor system. They surely have resources to design anything and even beyond that, but added cost to the production just can't be easy to conceal. There must be some sane limit to NSA's possible omnipotence. And then there are reverse engineers who love to peek what's done in silicon. NSA has to shut up not only original part vendor (easy for them, sure), but a bunch of engineers around the world, stealing designs for the chips so they'd make a clone. You know, some countries are famous for that stuff. Add: as for base stations - they're outside the phone. We don't consider plaintext data outside to be secure. If you're about the voice calls - E2E-encrypted VoIP to the rescue.
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    The cost is irrelevant, the NSA doesn't calculate how much it would cost them to tap Bob's phone, but how much it would hypothetically cost them if they couldn't. Considering from the NSA exploit catalog we've seen that they target very specific and niche devices I don't think they care about scale when it's not possible. Yes the base band doesn't have DMA since it's connected over USB but it still wouldn't trust it if my life would depend on it in even the slightest of ways. For all we know the baseband and all basebands are compromised to the point where the NSA can tap into them DMA or not, there might be some undocumented remote debugging interface that opens a serial connection to the baseband over cellular, there could be a 1000's other things. And while USB does not support DMA it still doesn't mean it's safe by any means, attack over USB can still happen. As for NSA's omnipotence, yes there is a limit to it, but that limit won't be reached by a group of engineers building a phone with commercial off-the-shelf hardware and open source software. If the NSA's reach could be that easy to defeat than they would be very very bad at their jobs, in fact a simple commercial device like this that some how even remotely limits their ability to task their targets would be a reason to shake the NSA up completely and light a fire under their asses because they've been sleeping on the job. But as we all know they aren't sleeping on their job, in fact they act like a bunch of hyper intelligent teenagers on adderall, the NSA and their counter parts shown us for the past 70 years that no system, no network, no form of communication device is safe from them, that's their job, doesn't mean that they should have the mandate to do it all the time, but if they can't they aren't fulfilling their role.
    - drdaeman 11y ago
      The cost of backdooring is put not on NSA but on hardware vendors. They have to add extra silicon and that stuff costs. And there is a huge market of reverse-engineered mostly-compatible clones, too. My idea was that I'm practically sure that if I'd take a small-enough MCU or FPGA it'd be NSA-free. Just because putting a backdoor there (and that backdoor has to be quite smart and listen for signals on a lot of pins, while being discrete about that) would seriously increase complexity and cost of the device. And that would be noticeable. Just don't believe this would went unnoticed for any long. As for SoCs - yes, they're complex enough and their interconnections are quite standardized. So, you're probably right.
- wicket 11y ago
  Everything in theory could be compromised, that's the story of computer security but that doesn't mean we should ignore any threats. That's like saying I might as well use dictionary words for all my passwords because they are easy to remember and there's no such thing as a secure system. The point is that the Neo900's baseband sandbox will provide significant protection that no other device can offer. _If_ a government agency decides they want to try to break the sandbox of a device owned by only 400 people, maybe they'll find a vulnerability that they can exploit, but it may take them many man hours to do so and even then there's no guarantee that they will find anything. Accessing the base station controller (or any other part of the cellular infrastructure for that matter) lawfully or unlawfully, is indeed possible but that does very little to help an adversary take over your device. What it does help them to do is to read your communications. If you are paranoid about that, you can use your own encryption. If you are paranoid about your location being tracked then just turn off the modem or don't use a mobile phone. The difference between the Neo900 and everything else is that when turn off the modem, you know it actually is off.
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    Again with the "significant" protection, there is no evidence that the Neo900 or any other commercially available "secure" phone actually will provide any significant level of protection against state sponsored threats. I look at this from another perspective if http://goldelico.com/ http://goldelico.com/ could create a phone which is NSA proof on any level from commercial over the shelf hardware than the NSA is a colossal failure, but they aren't. The number of users that will use the phone is also irrelevant, because you look at this as only 400 people, the NSA looks at it as these are 400 people that intentionally attempt to evade our surveillance lets check it out. Back to the phone part everything they've done might seem right, and might seem to be harder to break, but as it seems that not a single phone that is actually used by government agencies in the states is build that way, the NSA certifies certain devices, they do not allow any of them to be used to store or communicate secret information, but it's allowed to be used for confidential matters. If the NSA could build a phone that they would think it secure, they would do, which again leads me to strongly believe that all of these measures are pointless, yes they might offer some additional level of protection against non-state agents or states without a sufficiently advanced intelligence services but even that might be doubtful because it's unlikely that we'll see this phone going head to head against commercial phone exploitation solutions.

dogma1138 11y ago

The baseband can be compromised, the SOC can be compromised, the OS can be compromised, the SIM card can be compromised, and more importantly the base station it self can be lawfully and unlawfully accessed. The safe part is in theory, there are only a handful of companies that could actually audit a mobile system in any effective matter pretty much all of them are also the vendors of various mobile interception, tracking, and exploitation solutions. Dealing with any type of security requires you to identify and quantify your threat agents, if your threat agents are a foreign or a national intelligence service of any note i wouldn't bet anything on the N900 nor on any other cellphone. If you ask anyone, layman or expert what is a secure device that the NSA could not hack the only thing that they might come up with is a brick, and i wouldn't even trust that[1]. At best the N900 might give you some reliability that when it's off and when the radio is turned off it's actually off, considering that sleep mode power consumption can vary by quite a bit in the same SOC based on conditions like temperature it wouldn't surprise me if you could fool that as well. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

drdaeman 11y ago
Everything can be backdoored, but what about costs? If the interconnection between the baseband and SoC is restricted in a way baseband can't just do DMA requests and mess with the system, the compromised baseband has to talk to the the compromised SoC to compromise the OS. NSA have to either develop a specific backdoor for a specific device (or, better say, schematically similar devices group) and hook into their supply chain (hmmmm...), or develop a quite cost-adding generic backdoor system. They surely have resources to design anything and even beyond that, but added cost to the production just can't be easy to conceal. There must be some sane limit to NSA's possible omnipotence. And then there are reverse engineers who love to peek what's done in silicon. NSA has to shut up not only original part vendor (easy for them, sure), but a bunch of engineers around the world, stealing designs for the chips so they'd make a clone. You know, some countries are famous for that stuff. Add: as for base stations - they're outside the phone. We don't consider plaintext data outside to be secure. If you're about the voice calls - E2E-encrypted VoIP to the rescue.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  The cost is irrelevant, the NSA doesn't calculate how much it would cost them to tap Bob's phone, but how much it would hypothetically cost them if they couldn't. Considering from the NSA exploit catalog we've seen that they target very specific and niche devices I don't think they care about scale when it's not possible. Yes the base band doesn't have DMA since it's connected over USB but it still wouldn't trust it if my life would depend on it in even the slightest of ways. For all we know the baseband and all basebands are compromised to the point where the NSA can tap into them DMA or not, there might be some undocumented remote debugging interface that opens a serial connection to the baseband over cellular, there could be a 1000's other things. And while USB does not support DMA it still doesn't mean it's safe by any means, attack over USB can still happen. As for NSA's omnipotence, yes there is a limit to it, but that limit won't be reached by a group of engineers building a phone with commercial off-the-shelf hardware and open source software. If the NSA's reach could be that easy to defeat than they would be very very bad at their jobs, in fact a simple commercial device like this that some how even remotely limits their ability to task their targets would be a reason to shake the NSA up completely and light a fire under their asses because they've been sleeping on the job. But as we all know they aren't sleeping on their job, in fact they act like a bunch of hyper intelligent teenagers on adderall, the NSA and their counter parts shown us for the past 70 years that no system, no network, no form of communication device is safe from them, that's their job, doesn't mean that they should have the mandate to do it all the time, but if they can't they aren't fulfilling their role.
  - drdaeman 11y ago
    The cost of backdooring is put not on NSA but on hardware vendors. They have to add extra silicon and that stuff costs. And there is a huge market of reverse-engineered mostly-compatible clones, too. My idea was that I'm practically sure that if I'd take a small-enough MCU or FPGA it'd be NSA-free. Just because putting a backdoor there (and that backdoor has to be quite smart and listen for signals on a lot of pins, while being discrete about that) would seriously increase complexity and cost of the device. And that would be noticeable. Just don't believe this would went unnoticed for any long. As for SoCs - yes, they're complex enough and their interconnections are quite standardized. So, you're probably right.
wicket 11y ago
Everything in theory could be compromised, that's the story of computer security but that doesn't mean we should ignore any threats. That's like saying I might as well use dictionary words for all my passwords because they are easy to remember and there's no such thing as a secure system. The point is that the Neo900's baseband sandbox will provide significant protection that no other device can offer. _If_ a government agency decides they want to try to break the sandbox of a device owned by only 400 people, maybe they'll find a vulnerability that they can exploit, but it may take them many man hours to do so and even then there's no guarantee that they will find anything. Accessing the base station controller (or any other part of the cellular infrastructure for that matter) lawfully or unlawfully, is indeed possible but that does very little to help an adversary take over your device. What it does help them to do is to read your communications. If you are paranoid about that, you can use your own encryption. If you are paranoid about your location being tracked then just turn off the modem or don't use a mobile phone. The difference between the Neo900 and everything else is that when turn off the modem, you know it actually is off.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  Again with the "significant" protection, there is no evidence that the Neo900 or any other commercially available "secure" phone actually will provide any significant level of protection against state sponsored threats. I look at this from another perspective if http://goldelico.com/ http://goldelico.com/ could create a phone which is NSA proof on any level from commercial over the shelf hardware than the NSA is a colossal failure, but they aren't. The number of users that will use the phone is also irrelevant, because you look at this as only 400 people, the NSA looks at it as these are 400 people that intentionally attempt to evade our surveillance lets check it out. Back to the phone part everything they've done might seem right, and might seem to be harder to break, but as it seems that not a single phone that is actually used by government agencies in the states is build that way, the NSA certifies certain devices, they do not allow any of them to be used to store or communicate secret information, but it's allowed to be used for confidential matters. If the NSA could build a phone that they would think it secure, they would do, which again leads me to strongly believe that all of these measures are pointless, yes they might offer some additional level of protection against non-state agents or states without a sufficiently advanced intelligence services but even that might be doubtful because it's unlikely that we'll see this phone going head to head against commercial phone exploitation solutions.