Nobody’s Cellphone Is Really That Secure • Hacker News Board

Re: Nobody’s Cellphone Is Really That Secure

#11

Post by xbmcuser » Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

cube00 wrote: post #2

> Google now has its own phone—Pixel—that gets security updates quickly and regularly. The Nexus 5 line used to have this until Google decided after three years to stop supporting it despite the hardware continuing to last well beyond that.

The problem was hardware manufacturers ie processor etc would not support newer versions of the OS and kernals. Thats why they have come up with project treble with that you would be able to install newer versions of android long after they themselves stop giving updates.

Re: Nobody’s Cellphone Is Really That Secure

#12

Post by tjoff » Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 2:29 PM UTC

cube00 wrote: post #2

> Google now has its own phone—Pixel—that gets security updates quickly and regularly. The Nexus 5 line used to have this until Google decided after three years to stop supporting it despite the hardware continuing to last well beyond that.

A three year old Nexus 5 won't be usable due to the battery anyway.

Re: Nobody’s Cellphone Is Really That Secure

#13

Post by vvanders » Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 2:32 PM UTC

xbmcuser wrote: post #11

cube00 wrote: post #2

> Google now has its own phone—Pixel—that gets security updates quickly and regularly. The Nexus 5 line used to have this until Google decided after three years to stop supporting it despite the hardware continuing to last well beyond that.

The problem was hardware manufacturers ie processor etc would not support newer versions of the OS and kernals. Thats why they have come up with project treble with that you would be able to install newer versions of android long after they themselves stop giving updates.

You build that into the contract when you launch the phone. Pretty standard stuff, just costs money.

Re: Nobody’s Cellphone Is Really That Secure

#14

Post by schaefer » Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 2:33 PM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #12

cube00 wrote: post #2

> Google now has its own phone—Pixel—that gets security updates quickly and regularly. The Nexus 5 line used to have this until Google decided after three years to stop supporting it despite the hardware continuing to last well beyond that.

A three year old Nexus 5 won't be usable due to the battery anyway.

I have one. I am using it.

Re: Nobody’s Cellphone Is Really That Secure

#15

Post by HillaryBriss » Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 2:39 PM UTC

> iPhones are harder to hack, which is reflected in the prices companies pay for new exploit capabilities. In 2016, the vulnerability broker Zerodium offered $1.5 million for an unknown iOS exploit and only $200 for a similar Android exploit.

I'm curious, given the fragmentation of the Android ecosystem, how many phones each of those two exploits would affect.

Re: Nobody’s Cellphone Is Really That Secure

#16

Post by 13of40 » Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 2:48 PM UTC

shazow wrote: post #9

imglorp wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make no mistake: their phones are data gathering devices serving one master. They may keep up to date with patches, but you have very little knowledge or control of what they collect from you and what they do with it.

> They may keep up to date with patches, but you have very little knowledge or control of what they collect from you and what they do with it. It's not an ominous mystery. Google is extremely explicit about what they collect from you and what they do with it. https://myaccount.google.com/privacy https://policies.google.com/privacy I have not seen any evidence that they violate their own policies, even when I worked t…

If you were an engineer working at Google on one of the services that handles, say, location data from phones, how difficult would it be for you to go into the environment and find a specific person's location history? Also, what logging or other audit trail is there for that access?

Re: Nobody’s Cellphone Is Really That Secure

#17

Post by Yetanfou » Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 2:50 PM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #12

cube00 wrote: post #2

> Google now has its own phone—Pixel—that gets security updates quickly and regularly. The Nexus 5 line used to have this until Google decided after three years to stop supporting it despite the hardware continuing to last well beyond that.

A three year old Nexus 5 won't be usable due to the battery anyway.

Which is why you swap the battery - be careful of those nasty small plastic clips when you open the thing - after which it'll happily chug along for another 3 years.

BTW, I'm using a number of 8 year old phones, with 8 year old batteries which still keep enough charge for about 2-3 days. A typical lithium-ion battery in typical operating conditions (i.e. body temperature, cycling between 20-40% and 100% charge) can generally be charged about 500 times (full charge cycles) before its capacity significantly decreases (i.e. [1] https://batteryuniversity.com/index.php/learn/article/bu_808...

[2] https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/s0378-7753(01)00783-2

Re: Nobody’s Cellphone Is Really That Secure

#18

Post by aaronharnly » Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

The original NYTimes article suggested that calls would be intercepted because of the transmission network:

But the calls made from the phones are intercepted as they travel through the cell towers, cables and switches that make up national and international cellphone networks. Calls made from any cellphone — iPhone, Android, an old-school Samsung flip phone — are vulnerable.

Are cellphone calls different from landlines in this respect? Don’t landline calls go through cables and switches too? I know in the old days landlines were connected via direct circuits, but that can’t be true anymore, can it? Can anyone shed light on this?

Re: Nobody’s Cellphone Is Really That Secure

#19

Post by kakaorka » Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 2:54 PM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #12

cube00 wrote: post #2

> Google now has its own phone—Pixel—that gets security updates quickly and regularly. The Nexus 5 line used to have this until Google decided after three years to stop supporting it despite the hardware continuing to last well beyond that.

A three year old Nexus 5 won't be usable due to the battery anyway.

You can always change the battery.

Re: Nobody’s Cellphone Is Really That Secure

#20

Post by tjoff » Sat, Oct 27, 2018, 2:56 PM UTC

Yetanfou wrote: post #17

tjoff wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A three year old Nexus 5 won't be usable due to the battery anyway.

Which is why you swap the battery - be careful of those nasty small plastic clips when you open the thing - after which it'll happily chug along for another 3 years. BTW, I'm using a number of 8 year old phones, with 8 year old batteries which still keep enough charge for about 2-3 days. A typical lithium-ion battery in typical operating conditions (i.e. body temperature, cycling between 20-40% and 100% charge) can g…

For me battery life in phones used heavily seems to typically loose 50% in two years and then rapidly become unusable. Which kind of sucks if they can barely last one day when they are brand new. Fakes are of course much worse, and getting original parts when you can't officially replace the battery can be very challenging.

Yes, I still have a Nexus 5 I bought on launch day. Yes I've replaced the battery twice. Yes the battery is a fake knockoff. Battery life is still miserable, but since I only use wifi on I save lots of power that way which makes it usable for my use case.