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Keep your devices always up to date and limit the number of apps you use (lower attack surface). If paranoid, use a different device to access suspicios apps/

Keep your devices always up to date and limit the number of apps you use (lower attack surface). If paranoid, use a different device to access suspicios apps/sites with nothing on it.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 8mo ago
How do we know it is not rigged with an explosive like the Pagers? Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45763674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45763674 "Cohen (former head of Mossad) insisted that the publicly recognized success against Hezbollah was merely one element of a far wider, systematic deployment of sophisticated devices worldwide, although notably abscent in the Gaza Strip."
- magicalhippo 8mo ago
  Take it with you on an international trip or three. Surely those airport scanners will pick it up.
  - hparadiz 8mo ago
    That's actually a great point. Out of the hundreds of pagers that were out in the wild you'd think one of them went through an airport check at some point and got flagged.
    - embedding-shape 8mo ago
      Why would it get flagged? Weren't they just slightly modified pagers essentially rigged to overheat, rather than they actually put explosives in them? Besides, if I was in a terrorist cell, had a pager for communicating, and was taking a vacation flight, I think I might leave that pager behind for a week.
      - hparadiz 8mo ago
        Lol no. They had actual explosives in them. Small but enough to kill and maim.
      - 9991 8mo ago
        > Weren't they just slightly modified pagers essentially rigged to overheat, rather than they actually put explosives in them? No
      - ivl 8mo ago
        No. They weren't flagged because they went into Lebanon which has very little import security, and because it was a supply chain attack. The batteries were swapped for a combination battery / explosive charge. The follow-up attack where Hezbollah moved to using walkie-talkies that were also rigged to explode was the real shocker, though.
  - ImHereToVote 8mo ago
    You mean the security theater complex?
    - magicalhippo 8mo ago
      Yeah, I mean surely that would catch it, right... right?
- ivl 8mo ago
  His claim there did not necessarily imply rigged explosives, but supply chain attacks either for surveillance or assassination purposes. And his limiting it to "virtually every potential theater" would suggest that it's mostly present in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, most likely Iraq as well. But let's be honest here, this isn't civilian equipment that's been compromised. It's supply chain attacks where the buyer is manipulated into buying goods that they've tampered with, or re-engineered. They weren't pagers anyone could pick up at Radio Shack. (Everyone who got hit was a target, or a direct relative of a target.)
  - SiempreViernes 8mo ago
    Or just standing next to someone in the line at the supermarket. Also, lets be clear and admit that if your notion of "target" is "anyone close to a device I sold years ago", you're not the type of person that cares if the balled up paper made it to the trash can: so long as it left your hand you would be satisfied.
    - yes_really 8mo ago
      The pager operation has been one of the most targeted ones in history for its size. The ratio of civilian by Hezbollah member casualties was very low compared to other military operations or a war.
      - SiempreViernes 8mo ago
        The perpetrators of pager attack had no way at all to know who would be closest to the pagers when they exploded, nor any way to know that the nominal owner of a particular pager were a combatant in the first place. So the perpetrators did not know they would actually hurt a lawful target, they just hoped it might. Anyway, stop supporting the genocide dude.
        yes_really 8mo ago
        Oh yeah, just random chance that the Hezbollah combatants would have their military pagers close to them rather than with some random civilian. What an incredible coincidence!
- foolserrandboy 8mo ago
  We know because we're not shooting rockets at them.
  - hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 8mo ago
    If only things were that simple and they weren't also helping ICE terrorise civilians.
  - Panda4 8mo ago
    Today they are targeting people shooting rockets, tomorrow they will target people commenting on these posts, the day after they will target specific group of people. So you may be safe today, what happens when they don't like your opinion ?
ignoramous 8mo ago
> limit the number of apps ... lower attack surface ... If paranoid While true in general, super apps that do too many things and used by billions (WhatsApp, Chrome, TikTok, Instagram, CleanMaster etc) are big enough of an attack surface already. Defenses (compile-time / runtime memory safety & control flow integrity, media coders/decoders, sandboxes, for example) are getting better & so exploits are getting expensive. > use a different device to access suspicios apps/sites with nothing on it While using different devices is good enough, it requires the end user to maintain strict isolation (and sometimes may require appropriate features from the OS). Using burners is an extreme version of this practice.
- gruez 8mo ago
  >super apps that do too many things and used by billions (WhatsApp, Chrome, TikTok, Instagram, CleanMaster etc) One of these are not like the others...
- dietr1ch 8mo ago
  Burners seem extreme, but old used hardware still seems the best and only way you can sort of prove isolation on your own. You can't trust software not to be buggy and both, hardware, and software not to be purposely compromised because "think of the children" (that the EFs proved to be BS).
jsheard 8mo ago
And if you use iPhones and have reason to be really paranoid, consider using lockdown mode. https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120 https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120
- PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago
  Has android been hacked? I only know pegasus broke iOS. I find it interesting that Apple has spun Lockdown mode from a 'we are terrible at security' into a feature for marketing. Now when someone gets hacked Apple can say: "Well they weren't in lockdown mode, its their own fault." Gosh I wish I was as good at marketing as Apple. They really need to sell their marketing team as a service. If they did that, I'd buy their stock outright.
  - NoiseBert69 8mo ago
    With GrapheneOS you can physically switch off the USB while locked.
  - gruez 8mo ago
    >Has android been hacked? Yes, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46989612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46989612
  - microtonal 8mo ago
    Every phone is hackable but Pixel with GrapheneOS generally seems the hardest. See e.g. the leaked Cellebrite support matrix: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/14344-cellebrite-premium-july-2024-documentation https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/14344-cellebrite-premium-ju... iOS generally seems harder than non-GrapheneOS Android, taking a few months for Cellebrite to catch up with. All the other Android phones/variants should make people cry because device security is so bad.
- iririririr 8mo ago
  two last attacks from paragon for pixel devices uses the modem firmware. these things doesn't help much.
Aerbil313 8mo ago
iPhone 17's and later offer the highest level of security in a smartphone: https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement/ https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement...

Keep your devices always up to date and limit the number of apps you use (lower attack surface). If paranoid, use a different device to access suspicios apps/sites with nothing on it.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 8mo ago

How do we know it is not rigged with an explosive like the Pagers? Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45763674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45763674 "Cohen (former head of Mossad) insisted that the publicly recognized success against Hezbollah was merely one element of a far wider, systematic deployment of sophisticated devices worldwide, although notably abscent in the Gaza Strip."

magicalhippo 8mo ago
Take it with you on an international trip or three. Surely those airport scanners will pick it up.
- hparadiz 8mo ago
  That's actually a great point. Out of the hundreds of pagers that were out in the wild you'd think one of them went through an airport check at some point and got flagged.
  - embedding-shape 8mo ago
    Why would it get flagged? Weren't they just slightly modified pagers essentially rigged to overheat, rather than they actually put explosives in them? Besides, if I was in a terrorist cell, had a pager for communicating, and was taking a vacation flight, I think I might leave that pager behind for a week.
    - hparadiz 8mo ago
      Lol no. They had actual explosives in them. Small but enough to kill and maim.
    - 9991 8mo ago
      > Weren't they just slightly modified pagers essentially rigged to overheat, rather than they actually put explosives in them? No
    - ivl 8mo ago
      No. They weren't flagged because they went into Lebanon which has very little import security, and because it was a supply chain attack. The batteries were swapped for a combination battery / explosive charge. The follow-up attack where Hezbollah moved to using walkie-talkies that were also rigged to explode was the real shocker, though.
- ImHereToVote 8mo ago
  You mean the security theater complex?
  - magicalhippo 8mo ago
    Yeah, I mean surely that would catch it, right... right?
ivl 8mo ago
His claim there did not necessarily imply rigged explosives, but supply chain attacks either for surveillance or assassination purposes. And his limiting it to "virtually every potential theater" would suggest that it's mostly present in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, most likely Iraq as well. But let's be honest here, this isn't civilian equipment that's been compromised. It's supply chain attacks where the buyer is manipulated into buying goods that they've tampered with, or re-engineered. They weren't pagers anyone could pick up at Radio Shack. (Everyone who got hit was a target, or a direct relative of a target.)
- SiempreViernes 8mo ago
  Or just standing next to someone in the line at the supermarket. Also, lets be clear and admit that if your notion of "target" is "anyone close to a device I sold years ago", you're not the type of person that cares if the balled up paper made it to the trash can: so long as it left your hand you would be satisfied.
  - yes_really 8mo ago
    The pager operation has been one of the most targeted ones in history for its size. The ratio of civilian by Hezbollah member casualties was very low compared to other military operations or a war.
    - SiempreViernes 8mo ago
      The perpetrators of pager attack had no way at all to know who would be closest to the pagers when they exploded, nor any way to know that the nominal owner of a particular pager were a combatant in the first place. So the perpetrators did not know they would actually hurt a lawful target, they just hoped it might. Anyway, stop supporting the genocide dude.
      - yes_really 8mo ago
        Oh yeah, just random chance that the Hezbollah combatants would have their military pagers close to them rather than with some random civilian. What an incredible coincidence!
foolserrandboy 8mo ago
We know because we're not shooting rockets at them.
- hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 8mo ago
  If only things were that simple and they weren't also helping ICE terrorise civilians.
- Panda4 8mo ago
  Today they are targeting people shooting rockets, tomorrow they will target people commenting on these posts, the day after they will target specific group of people. So you may be safe today, what happens when they don't like your opinion ?

ignoramous 8mo ago

> limit the number of apps ... lower attack surface ... If paranoid While true in general, super apps that do too many things and used by billions (WhatsApp, Chrome, TikTok, Instagram, CleanMaster etc) are big enough of an attack surface already. Defenses (compile-time / runtime memory safety & control flow integrity, media coders/decoders, sandboxes, for example) are getting better & so exploits are getting expensive. > use a different device to access suspicios apps/sites with nothing on it While using different devices is good enough, it requires the end user to maintain strict isolation (and sometimes may require appropriate features from the OS). Using burners is an extreme version of this practice.

gruez 8mo ago
>super apps that do too many things and used by billions (WhatsApp, Chrome, TikTok, Instagram, CleanMaster etc) One of these are not like the others...
dietr1ch 8mo ago
Burners seem extreme, but old used hardware still seems the best and only way you can sort of prove isolation on your own. You can't trust software not to be buggy and both, hardware, and software not to be purposely compromised because "think of the children" (that the EFs proved to be BS).

jsheard 8mo ago

And if you use iPhones and have reason to be really paranoid, consider using lockdown mode. https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120 https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120

PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago
Has android been hacked? I only know pegasus broke iOS. I find it interesting that Apple has spun Lockdown mode from a 'we are terrible at security' into a feature for marketing. Now when someone gets hacked Apple can say: "Well they weren't in lockdown mode, its their own fault." Gosh I wish I was as good at marketing as Apple. They really need to sell their marketing team as a service. If they did that, I'd buy their stock outright.
- NoiseBert69 8mo ago
  With GrapheneOS you can physically switch off the USB while locked.
- gruez 8mo ago
  >Has android been hacked? Yes, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46989612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46989612
- microtonal 8mo ago
  Every phone is hackable but Pixel with GrapheneOS generally seems the hardest. See e.g. the leaked Cellebrite support matrix: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/14344-cellebrite-premium-july-2024-documentation https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/14344-cellebrite-premium-ju... iOS generally seems harder than non-GrapheneOS Android, taking a few months for Cellebrite to catch up with. All the other Android phones/variants should make people cry because device security is so bad.
iririririr 8mo ago
two last attacks from paragon for pixel devices uses the modem firmware. these things doesn't help much.

Aerbil313 8mo ago

iPhone 17's and later offer the highest level of security in a smartphone: https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement/ https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement...