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You can just use whatsapp or whatever. The phone network with SIP/SS7 etc. is hopeless, but you don't have to use it, and most people I know prefer other forms
by tormeh 5y ago
You can just use whatsapp or whatever. The phone network with SIP/SS7 etc. is hopeless, but you don't have to use it, and most people I know prefer other forms of communication anyway.
- qeternity 5y agoAh right, sorry understood. You're completely right...I wasn't thinking in terms of IP-based services.
- graderjs 5y agoI mean more like not just the data transfer layer, but the whole cell telephony baseband firmware enables privileged access to your phone. This can be the entry vector for multiple exploits that go way below the application layer. E2E encrypt is meaningless at this level.
- xoa 5y ago>but the whole cell telephony baseband firmware enables privileged access to your phone This is very outdated, at least for a significant number of smartphones (including all iPhones, but not limited just to those). Apple and IIRC other manufacturers long since isolated the baseband, treating it simply as a standard USB or PCIe peripheral (and in the latter case using an IOMMU with it amongst other things). It has zero special access to anything on the rest of the phone which in the smart phone era is where everything of interest actually lives and happens.
- zikduruqe 5y ago^ This. Prior to Apple, the phone OEMs and carriers had hooks all into your baseband firmware for all kinds of things; firmware updates, CALEA hooks, automatic provisioning, etc... Source - used to certify these things in a lab environment.
- graderjs 5y agoThat's great to know. I'd like to feel reassured but I'm sure there's new exploits somewhere, the carrier level i think is just so attractive to large scale actors. Any internet links to read up on this, and on the next generation of possible carrier level exploit vectors?