111–120 of 200 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d imagine a vendor bothering to put an off switch will know that a simple teardown will show if it actually disconnects the device or just signals software to do it. The effort and expense would be for nothing. Most users would never bother to care about the off switch anyway, and the ones that do will know the truth.
Eh, as someone else mentioned the soft switch, you could very easily make this teardown resistant by putting the covert power rail on an inner layer of the pcb with the switching transistor out of the way connected to vias. It’s not teardown-proof, but wouldn’t be obvious with a trivial inspection.
So the issue would no longer be one of ignorance (no button) but of premeditation (button with hidden bypass).
Thanks to Purism laptops and phone for taking the lead on kill switches for sensors, https://puri.sm/learn/hardware-kill-switches/
Why do I trust my WiFi cards disable pin, but not the "soft button" on my laptop that triggers it via the OS? I get that there is more software when it goes through the OS, but I trust that a whole lot more than the firmware on the WiFi card. This is from the same group that tries to explain how they don't use proprietary firmware blogs by using the Redpine chips just because the blog is already flashed on it rather…
Yes, the network is not connected, but google is still tracking SSIDs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hopefully this would easily be detected, and the brand damage from the resultant public shaming should be enough of a deterrent. But maybe it's really well hidden and eludes detection, or people just don't care and there is no brand damage, or maybe even there's no "real" brand to damage (OEM crapware).
What's the brand damage from the resultant public shaming of e.g. Google Nest Guard' 'hidden' microphone?
Am I the only one who has far more sensitive content visible on the screen and filesystem of my computer than through its camera? I feel like, at least for the threat models that I consider likely, if someone manages to hack my laptop and get (for example) microphone access, the thing I am most worried about is that they will use acoustic analysis of keystrokes to recover my banking password, not that they will hear…
In any security conversation, the vector one should care about is the path of least resistance.
Am I the only one who has far more sensitive content visible on the screen and filesystem of my computer than through its camera? I feel like, at least for the threat models that I consider likely, if someone manages to hack my laptop and get (for example) microphone access, the thing I am most worried about is that they will use acoustic analysis of keystrokes to recover my banking password, not that they will hear…
Maybe not in one year, but in five.. ten?
If they get proper penetration it would be a tempting target for various governments for differing reasons.
Am I the only one who has far more sensitive content visible on the screen and filesystem of my computer than through its camera? I feel like, at least for the threat models that I consider likely, if someone manages to hack my laptop and get (for example) microphone access, the thing I am most worried about is that they will use acoustic analysis of keystrokes to recover my banking password, not that they will hear…
I wonder if/when the vendors of those home assistants will be required by law to activate on a list of confidencial sounds like screams, gunshots etc. Maybe not in one year, but in five.. ten? If they get proper penetration it would be a tempting target for various governments for differing reasons.
The future is bleak.