7 ms·

What are they meant to do? They build a secure phone. It gets ripped off by the manufacturer and resold by anonymous eBay people who can install whatever backd

by sqldba 10y ago

What are they meant to do? They build a secure phone. It gets ripped off by the manufacturer and resold by anonymous eBay people who can install whatever backdoors on the phone. Then the people using them are being snooped on - exactly what they don't want in the first place. Bricking the phones is the right thing to do.

pavel_lishin 10y ago
You can notify the user that their phone is not a legitimate product and is likely insecure without completely crippling it in the process.
- sjwright 10y ago
  And allow the user ongoing use of a pirated copy of their Silent OS software? That's generous. (It's also not Silent Circle's fault if the counterfeit devices were sold with a locked bootloader, precluding the installation of another Android distro.)
  - sjwright 10y ago
    Receiving downvotes. Would be interested in an actual response. If someone was selling laptops with a pirated copy of Windows on it and a Windows update recognized the unlicensed install, causing the laptop to be non-functional, would that be any different? Remember, the maker of these dodgy laptops has locked the bios so that you can't reinstall a genuine operating system...
    - chipperyman573 10y ago
      It isn't like you're buying a used laptop from someone on Craigslist, the people buying these phones were intentionally mislead to believe that they were buying a brand new (in a shrinkwrapped box) phone from an authorized retailer. If bestbuy sold windows laptops, advertised that it came with a valid Windows licence and they turned out to be lying, should Microsoft brick their laptops?
      - sjwright 10y ago
        Buying a counterfeit product on Ebay is exactly like buying a used laptop from someone on Craigslist, save for the buyer's perception of the seller. I don't see how the appearance of the counterfeit product, or the ignorance of the buyer, or the mainstream-ness of the seller is at all relevant here. To complete your laptop analogy, this "new" laptop from Best Buy turned out to be goods ripped off the assembly line at the Dell factory before the unit had its Windows OEM license assigned or paid for. The software is unlicensed and therefore not genuine. It is not for Microsoft to offer sympathy and a blind eye, they are well within their rights to identify counterfeit installations of Windows and disable them. The remedy is for Best Buy to offer the customer a full refund.
      - sjwright 10y ago
        Let me put it another way. Forget hardware for a moment. The purchaser of these counterfeit Blackphones thought they were buying a software license for Silent OS. In reality it is pirated software. And not just garden variety downloaded-with-bittorrent-for-free piracy but rather software piracy as a profitable business model. Silent Circle doesn't owe these consumers anything and are well within their rights to have all of their software completely self-destruct. They don't owe these consumers a robust mechanism to install an AOSP distro. They don't owe these consumers a bootable device. They don't owe these consumers a discount on a genuine device. The only correct resolution is for the scam victims to receive a refund from the seller.
        trome 10y ago
        Whoa whoa whoa, Silent OS is based on Android, incorporating many GPLv2 and other FLOSS software. They may have done some minor hardening & UI changes, but beyond that the value of Silent OS is the apps they have built for calling & texting securely. I could see stopping service on those apps, but bricking the baseband is a step too far, as you lose 911 access and Silent Circle almost certainly had no part in the baseband firmware development and is not a rightsholder to it.
        sjwright 10y ago
mindslight 10y ago
They're supposed to not have this capability, if they actually built a secure phone!
- otikik 10y ago
  But they did not build the ones which are bricked - they are counterfeit.
  - timthelion 10y ago
    This is such a bad faith reply. Of course they also have the capability to brick or backdore the ones which are not coutnerfeit as well.
    - Nomentatus 10y ago
      This is a worry - a disgruntled-but-trusted employee decides might use this fine tool you built for a reasonable purpose from using it to brick every phone you've ever made on his-or-her way out your door.
- StavrosK 10y ago
  What, the capability to install updates? So you'd be fine with a secure phone that the vendor could never update?
  - mindslight 10y ago
    The vendor shouldn't be able to push an update, no. And to the extent that this update was pulled by users without a diff/sanity check/etc, then that constitutes a de facto push. In any case, any update should be completely revertible (which doesn't prevent against data leaks from hostile code, but does prevent against denial of service). This type of attack is just a test case that any truly secure device has to defend against. I'm not advocating a specific mechanism of avoiding this behavior, because there's obviously work to be done here to come up with a better mechanism than "every user audits every line of source before installing". It's just that this design work has to be done - "security" based on trusting a company is easy, and doesn't differ appreciably from what say Apple already provides.

by sqldba 10y ago

pavel_lishin 10y ago

You can notify the user that their phone is not a legitimate product and is likely insecure without completely crippling it in the process.

sjwright 10y ago
And allow the user ongoing use of a pirated copy of their Silent OS software? That's generous. (It's also not Silent Circle's fault if the counterfeit devices were sold with a locked bootloader, precluding the installation of another Android distro.)
- sjwright 10y ago
  Receiving downvotes. Would be interested in an actual response. If someone was selling laptops with a pirated copy of Windows on it and a Windows update recognized the unlicensed install, causing the laptop to be non-functional, would that be any different? Remember, the maker of these dodgy laptops has locked the bios so that you can't reinstall a genuine operating system...
  - chipperyman573 10y ago
    It isn't like you're buying a used laptop from someone on Craigslist, the people buying these phones were intentionally mislead to believe that they were buying a brand new (in a shrinkwrapped box) phone from an authorized retailer. If bestbuy sold windows laptops, advertised that it came with a valid Windows licence and they turned out to be lying, should Microsoft brick their laptops?
    - sjwright 10y ago
      Buying a counterfeit product on Ebay is exactly like buying a used laptop from someone on Craigslist, save for the buyer's perception of the seller. I don't see how the appearance of the counterfeit product, or the ignorance of the buyer, or the mainstream-ness of the seller is at all relevant here. To complete your laptop analogy, this "new" laptop from Best Buy turned out to be goods ripped off the assembly line at the Dell factory before the unit had its Windows OEM license assigned or paid for. The software is unlicensed and therefore not genuine. It is not for Microsoft to offer sympathy and a blind eye, they are well within their rights to identify counterfeit installations of Windows and disable them. The remedy is for Best Buy to offer the customer a full refund.
    - sjwright 10y ago
      Let me put it another way. Forget hardware for a moment. The purchaser of these counterfeit Blackphones thought they were buying a software license for Silent OS. In reality it is pirated software. And not just garden variety downloaded-with-bittorrent-for-free piracy but rather software piracy as a profitable business model. Silent Circle doesn't owe these consumers anything and are well within their rights to have all of their software completely self-destruct. They don't owe these consumers a robust mechanism to install an AOSP distro. They don't owe these consumers a bootable device. They don't owe these consumers a discount on a genuine device. The only correct resolution is for the scam victims to receive a refund from the seller.
      - trome 10y ago
        Whoa whoa whoa, Silent OS is based on Android, incorporating many GPLv2 and other FLOSS software. They may have done some minor hardening & UI changes, but beyond that the value of Silent OS is the apps they have built for calling & texting securely. I could see stopping service on those apps, but bricking the baseband is a step too far, as you lose 911 access and Silent Circle almost certainly had no part in the baseband firmware development and is not a rightsholder to it.
        sjwright 10y ago

mindslight 10y ago

They're supposed to not have this capability, if they actually built a secure phone!

otikik 10y ago
But they did not build the ones which are bricked - they are counterfeit.
- timthelion 10y ago
  This is such a bad faith reply. Of course they also have the capability to brick or backdore the ones which are not coutnerfeit as well.
  - Nomentatus 10y ago
    This is a worry - a disgruntled-but-trusted employee decides might use this fine tool you built for a reasonable purpose from using it to brick every phone you've ever made on his-or-her way out your door.
StavrosK 10y ago
What, the capability to install updates? So you'd be fine with a secure phone that the vendor could never update?
- mindslight 10y ago
  The vendor shouldn't be able to push an update, no. And to the extent that this update was pulled by users without a diff/sanity check/etc, then that constitutes a de facto push. In any case, any update should be completely revertible (which doesn't prevent against data leaks from hostile code, but does prevent against denial of service). This type of attack is just a test case that any truly secure device has to defend against. I'm not advocating a specific mechanism of avoiding this behavior, because there's obviously work to be done here to come up with a better mechanism than "every user audits every line of source before installing". It's just that this design work has to be done - "security" based on trusting a company is easy, and doesn't differ appreciably from what say Apple already provides.