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With statements like this, the author is doing the community a disservice. It is very important to understand that a modern smartphone contains enough CPUs to b

by ge0rg 12y ago

With statements like this, the author is doing the community a disservice. It is very important to understand that a modern smartphone contains enough CPUs to be used against you, even if you only run Open Source on the primary one. This might not matter for most users, but it can decide about live and death for some, like journalists in crisis zones.

zanny 12y ago
There is so much prorprietary firmware everywhere that can fuck you over. Your mainboards almost always have proprietary firmware. Coreboot is woefully underutilized and underfunded in this regard. All hard drives have proprietary firmware, and often have proprietary processors on board. They are for all intents and purposes isolated computers in and of themselves, and nobody talks about how closed they are. Graphics hardware is predominantly proprietary, even the most open discrete cards (AMD's) which have technical documentation have proprietary firmware blobs. I can only barely trust myself using these on the pretense that others have already decompiled the blobs and found nothing particularly malignant on a few older model cards. Every other manufacturer except Intel and very recently Broadcom with a single model of GPU are whole stack proprietary. Network radios, as mentioned in this article, are almost always either wholly proprietary or have a firmware blob like GPUs. CD drives also have proprietary firmwares like hard drives. All TVs are running proprietary whole stack firmware on internal computers. Dumbphones also are computers, just whole stack proprietary. Your fridge, toaster, many ovens, and microwaves, if digital, are also whole stack proprietary computers. This stuff is everywhere. There is literally no way to liberate yourself. Even Richard Stallman is driving a car with a proprietary on board computer, and probably cooks food in a proprietary Microwave.
- jff 12y ago
  > Your mainboards almost always have proprietary firmware. Coreboot is woefully underutilized and underfunded in this regard. If you care about this, buy a Chromebook. The new ones have Coreboot. Of course, Google blah blah evil, but you can put your own OS in so the stack goes Coreboot->Uboot->(preferred Linux distro)
  - zanny 12y ago
    The real problem with many chromebooks is how they use firmware blobs Intel provides as injectors in Coreboot. They aren't really open firmware at all. AMD is pretty much the only company doing anything in this regard. Many of their recent chipsets are supported, like fm1 and fm2.
    - mkesper 12y ago
      And I thought "coreboot" meant really 100% free software. Depressing.
      - userbinator 12y ago
        There's a fork of it that is 100% free software: http://libreboot.org/ http://libreboot.org/ . Unfortunately it only supports one computer, the Thinkpad X60. (They even removed the CPU microcode updates, which IMHO is going a bit too far; there's already microcode in the CPU, and Intel issues those updates to fix various errata in the hardware. Maybe it was done more as an ideological thing.)
    - yuhong 12y ago
      And of course having different firmware for different OSes defeats the point of firmware standards. I think it is possible to run UEFI as a payload in coreboot.
  - userbinator 12y ago
    Or this, which is AFAIK the only 100% blob-free PC-compatible: http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/ibm-lenovo-thinkpad-x60-coreboot/ http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/ibm-lenovo-thinkpad-x60-c... https://www.fsf.org/news/gluglug-x60-laptop-now-certified-to-respect-your-freedom https://www.fsf.org/news/gluglug-x60-laptop-now-certified-to... If the FSF likes it, I think you can be pretty sure it's as free as it gets...
- SomeCallMeTim 12y ago
  The example that I found most amusing was that SD Cards have proprietary firmware -- turns out buying old SD Cards may be the cheapest way to get a single-board programmable microcontroller. [1] [1] http://gizmodo.com/sd-cards-are-tiny-hackable-computers-for-good-or-evil-1491553521 http://gizmodo.com/sd-cards-are-tiny-hackable-computers-for-...
- antihero 12y ago
  It's not just firmware, although that stuff is a risk, but the threat from mobile basebands is very real.

by ge0rg 12y ago

zanny 12y ago

There is so much prorprietary firmware everywhere that can fuck you over. Your mainboards almost always have proprietary firmware. Coreboot is woefully underutilized and underfunded in this regard. All hard drives have proprietary firmware, and often have proprietary processors on board. They are for all intents and purposes isolated computers in and of themselves, and nobody talks about how closed they are. Graphics hardware is predominantly proprietary, even the most open discrete cards (AMD's) which have technical documentation have proprietary firmware blobs. I can only barely trust myself using these on the pretense that others have already decompiled the blobs and found nothing particularly malignant on a few older model cards. Every other manufacturer except Intel and very recently Broadcom with a single model of GPU are whole stack proprietary. Network radios, as mentioned in this article, are almost always either wholly proprietary or have a firmware blob like GPUs. CD drives also have proprietary firmwares like hard drives. All TVs are running proprietary whole stack firmware on internal computers. Dumbphones also are computers, just whole stack proprietary. Your fridge, toaster, many ovens, and microwaves, if digital, are also whole stack proprietary computers. This stuff is everywhere. There is literally no way to liberate yourself. Even Richard Stallman is driving a car with a proprietary on board computer, and probably cooks food in a proprietary Microwave.

jff 12y ago
> Your mainboards almost always have proprietary firmware. Coreboot is woefully underutilized and underfunded in this regard. If you care about this, buy a Chromebook. The new ones have Coreboot. Of course, Google blah blah evil, but you can put your own OS in so the stack goes Coreboot->Uboot->(preferred Linux distro)
- zanny 12y ago
  The real problem with many chromebooks is how they use firmware blobs Intel provides as injectors in Coreboot. They aren't really open firmware at all. AMD is pretty much the only company doing anything in this regard. Many of their recent chipsets are supported, like fm1 and fm2.
  - mkesper 12y ago
    And I thought "coreboot" meant really 100% free software. Depressing.
    - userbinator 12y ago
      There's a fork of it that is 100% free software: http://libreboot.org/ http://libreboot.org/ . Unfortunately it only supports one computer, the Thinkpad X60. (They even removed the CPU microcode updates, which IMHO is going a bit too far; there's already microcode in the CPU, and Intel issues those updates to fix various errata in the hardware. Maybe it was done more as an ideological thing.)
  - yuhong 12y ago
    And of course having different firmware for different OSes defeats the point of firmware standards. I think it is possible to run UEFI as a payload in coreboot.
- userbinator 12y ago
  Or this, which is AFAIK the only 100% blob-free PC-compatible: http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/ibm-lenovo-thinkpad-x60-coreboot/ http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/ibm-lenovo-thinkpad-x60-c... https://www.fsf.org/news/gluglug-x60-laptop-now-certified-to-respect-your-freedom https://www.fsf.org/news/gluglug-x60-laptop-now-certified-to... If the FSF likes it, I think you can be pretty sure it's as free as it gets...
SomeCallMeTim 12y ago
The example that I found most amusing was that SD Cards have proprietary firmware -- turns out buying old SD Cards may be the cheapest way to get a single-board programmable microcontroller. [1] [1] http://gizmodo.com/sd-cards-are-tiny-hackable-computers-for-good-or-evil-1491553521 http://gizmodo.com/sd-cards-are-tiny-hackable-computers-for-...
antihero 12y ago
It's not just firmware, although that stuff is a risk, but the threat from mobile basebands is very real.