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Following the discussion on illegal cell tracking where several comments mentioned the firmware can be a problem, here's a link to a free-software firmware. I
by csdvrx 3y ago
Following the discussion on illegal cell tracking where several comments mentioned the firmware can be a problem, here's a link to a free-software firmware.
I believe this is important, because on Android the firmware controls the network connection (and GPS, etc). It has its own embedded Linux, flash and CPU so even if you have root and run a firewall on android, it can send packets that will not be visible to the android kernel.
Most firmware have adb and fastboot, which can be used to replace what's running there by something you can recompile and audit. If you don't like it, you can also restore the initial firmware, for ex: https://github.com/Biktorgj/quectel_eg25_recovery https://github.com/Biktorgj/quectel_eg25_recovery
EDIT: replaced baseband by firmware. I confused one for the other. For context as to why it matters, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36658078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36658078
- BasedAnon 3y agooh no breaking the law!!! /s
- nurple 3y agoIt's pretty interesting to see the added features this replacement userland provides when considering the tenacity of the TLAs in slurping up the data of citizens and non-citizens alike. It's capabilities like these that freak me out when considering similar stacks like the rPI GPU blobs and intel management engine/SGX. I don't expect with the public failure of Clipper that they simply gave up on the capability to run clandestine code on your hardware, I think they just changed tactics.
- kaba0 3y agoIt’s just the userspace, so you are not much closer to actual “free-software”.