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This advice makes sense given the threat model. However, it might not make sense for someone in Edward Snowden's role. If I were a military agency with a big bu
by Cieplak 10y ago
This advice makes sense given the threat model. However, it might not make sense for someone in Edward Snowden's role. If I were a military agency with a big budget, I would backdoor the shit out of every phone, enforce cultures of secrecy inside companies like google, apple, facebook, intel, qualcomm, at&t, and off any executive that interfered with the mission. Then I would pay experts to spend their lives on internet forums asserting that devices with two cameras, two microphones, wifi that can function as radar, an unremovable battery, a closed-source operating system and root access only available to a major US corporation via ssh, are the most secure computing platforms in the universe. That's just me though, if I had a lot of money and lust for world domination, neither of which I possess :)
Edit: removed sentence "Most mobile devices have baseband chips with DMA"
- tptacek 10y agoNo, iPhone basebands do not have direct memory access. This is a myth that will not die. The baseband on an iPhone (and on modern Android phones) is connected via a serial bus, as a peripheral. Both Google's and Apple's security teams consider the baseband an adversarial device. This has been true for many years, just as for many years people have been popping onto message boards to confidently inform us that basebands have direct access to memory.
- Cieplak 10y agoI never used the word iPhone in my comment. Thanks for dropping the knowledge, though.
- hackuser 10y ago> The baseband on ... on modern Android phones ... is connected via a serial bus, as a peripheral Doesn't that depend on the manufacturer, or does Google somehow make that a requirement?
- eeZah7Ux 10y ago> This is a myth that will not die. Linking to some sources would help, please.
- southbridge 10y agoIt would be a para-military agency. {edit: And it would use a slush-fund}