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"The two largest smartphone vendors have large, world-class security teams that do things like audit their basebands. Has Purism?" (and some other points that,
by rsync 8y ago
"The two largest smartphone vendors have large, world-class security teams that do things like audit their basebands. Has Purism?"
(and some other points that, I think, miss the point)
Once the baseband is isolated as a USB peripheral and the radio modules are physically pluggable modules ... and have kill switches ... the appropriate comparison is no longer to other phones. The appropriate comparison is to a PC, like a laptop.
This:
https://puri.sm/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/2018-07-26-dev-kit-blueprint.jpg https://puri.sm/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/2018-07-26-dev-ki...
... has the shape of a phone, but that sure looks like a PC to me.
I am happy running a PC without a secure enclave, with a USB cellular modem attached, and with only hazy knowledge of the baseband running on that (in my case) USB stick.
- tptacek 8y agoYour PC is much, much less secure than your iPhone is.
- madez 8y agoNor Google nor Apple can – to the best of my knowledge – decide what code is run or not run on my PC. That is evidently a plus point for security, if one doesn't blindly trusts these companies.
- pjmlp 8y agoThing is, I doubt very much you ensure that your $HOME is safe when that code is run. And as proven by the set of Linux Security Summit 2018 talks, there is still lots of work to be done regarding security on Linux distributions.
- madez 8y agoWell, I sandbox closed source apps by running them as a different user that doesn't have access to my $HOME.
- pjmlp 8y agoThat isn't enough to protect from kernel bugs, as discussed at Linux Security Summit, hence kernel self protection project and related initiatives, mostly driven by Google regarding Android security. If you use Qubes OS then it is another matter.
- madez 8y agoYou are being unreasonable because you equate the hypothetic possibility of malicious code execution by Apple or Google due to bugs with running an OS from either on hardware from them.
- lmm 8y agoAll modern cryptography relies on random key generation. But the current state of the art is that there is no way to distinguish between truly random numbers and pseudorandom numbers generated deterministically from a key. So how can we even begin to talk about security without openness? Maybe the key generated in the secure enclave of your iPhone never left that enclave - but maybe the NSA has a copy of it all the same.
- snaky 8y agoYour PC don't store your data on Chinese state-owned servers.
- anticensor 8y agoYou have a completely different security model on PC, though. PC is designed as a minified version of multi-user workstation, where system administrator itself is responsible for securing the system. iPhone, on the other hand, is designed for novice single-user use case, where manufacturer is responsible for securing the system.