4 ms·

It's no different than having no SIM, if your phone wants to spy on you, it doesn't need a SIM card. It's the phone that transceives the signals, and it can do

It's no different than having no SIM, if your phone wants to spy on you, it doesn't need a SIM card. It's the phone that transceives the signals, and it can do so without a SIM card. SIM card authenticates you to the network, but you control the device and the network around the device, there's no need for a SIM card.

amelius 10y ago
Yes, but now your Telco can also do those things.
colechristensen 10y ago
If there was an open standards-compliant protocol it could be implemented open-source and trusted. You could create an entire open operating system and use open hardware to know everything happening on your phone. That is different than having a SIM, which is a piece of mystery hardware the phone company could do anything with.
- Laforet 10y ago
  They already have control of all your traffic so what's the harm? Take the sim out of your phone in case you are really worried, but that would cut you off the network as well. I'd be far more concerned with the hundreds of microcontrollers running proprietary code.
  - colechristensen 10y ago
    The SIM, being a physical piece of hardware plugged into my phone, could easily be used as an attack vector for my phone company to root my phone. Hardware plugged into my phone is a much more vulnerable attack surface than control of network traffic.
    - EvanAnderson 10y ago
      The baseband is already at the beck-and-call of your telco provider and has much better access to the hardware than the SIM card.
    - infinity0 10y ago
      The point is your phone (if it were secure enough) could treat your SIM card like any other untrusted device accessory, and only let it do stuff it's allowed to do. [network] <-> [phone] <-> [SIM card] In theory. Not sure how well practise matches this though.
- gcb0 10y ago
  the selling point of the sim is that it it "trusted computing". meaning the user is left out by design.
gcb0 10y ago
so? the point is that the sim IS there already. yeah you can have more vulnerabilities, but that one is a given.

amelius 10y ago

Yes, but now your Telco can also do those things.

colechristensen 10y ago

If there was an open standards-compliant protocol it could be implemented open-source and trusted. You could create an entire open operating system and use open hardware to know everything happening on your phone. That is different than having a SIM, which is a piece of mystery hardware the phone company could do anything with.

Laforet 10y ago
They already have control of all your traffic so what's the harm? Take the sim out of your phone in case you are really worried, but that would cut you off the network as well. I'd be far more concerned with the hundreds of microcontrollers running proprietary code.
- colechristensen 10y ago
  The SIM, being a physical piece of hardware plugged into my phone, could easily be used as an attack vector for my phone company to root my phone. Hardware plugged into my phone is a much more vulnerable attack surface than control of network traffic.
  - EvanAnderson 10y ago
    The baseband is already at the beck-and-call of your telco provider and has much better access to the hardware than the SIM card.
  - infinity0 10y ago
    The point is your phone (if it were secure enough) could treat your SIM card like any other untrusted device accessory, and only let it do stuff it's allowed to do. [network] <-> [phone] <-> [SIM card] In theory. Not sure how well practise matches this though.
gcb0 10y ago
the selling point of the sim is that it it "trusted computing". meaning the user is left out by design.

gcb0 10y ago

so? the point is that the sim IS there already. yeah you can have more vulnerabilities, but that one is a given.