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Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

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Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#171

Post by TreeRingCounter »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #147
TreeRingCounter wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My device should serve me, not the EU. If I choose to violate EU emergency alert laws, that's on me.

Then you probably don't have one of those fancy new things called smartphones, as they are all very locked down and don't allow you to access or modify a lot of system settings, limit access to files apps create, don't allow to move some apps to the SD card, some of them even disallow you from installing apps from anywhere but their own app store. Certainly you don't have one of those devices that treat the user in a…

Notice that I used the word "should", not "does". And, in fact, I am deeply concerned about the war on general purpose computing.

Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#172

Post by siftrics »

Scoundreller wrote: post #142
siftrics wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the VPN is compromised, you're compromised.

What are the odds of seven chained VPNs all being compromised?

Doesn't matter. As long as one is compromised, you're screwed.

VPNs cannot break TLS, (unless you're dealing with the intelligence apparatus of a major power, which probably can break TLS) so they cannot introspect most of the content you send and receive anyways.

What they can do, however, is see the domain name of the HTTP requests you send when setting up TLS.

Chaining VPNs doesn't add security by any metric.

Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#173

Post by TreeRingCounter »

isodev wrote: post #130
TreeRingCounter wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My device should serve me, not the EU. If I choose to violate EU emergency alert laws, that's on me.

For other use cases, I'd probably agree with you. But you being startled and confused during an emergency because you didn't see the instructions on time can be very dangerous for everyone around you. It's not just on you.

The marginal upside to everyone else is not even close to worth the marginal downside to me. It's my choice to make. If a government wants to force messages on me so badly, they can set up something like an air raid siren (and they typically do, for actual emergencies).

Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#174

Post by matheusmoreira »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #51

Wait until your learn what a country or local government/police can do remotely to the baseband firmware of your phone with a court order... 10-20 years ago the FBI was regularly remotely programming firmware to listen in and record cell phone microphones to capture conversations of suspects. IIRC a mafia case hinged on data gathered in this way so it is not some abstract theoretical or crackpot theory ( https://www.…

Are attacks like these still possible? I've read here on HN that hardware makers are isolating the baseband processor as much as possible to prevent attacks like these. Surely there are countermeasures?

Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#175

Post by brainchild-adam »

isodev wrote: post #130
TreeRingCounter wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My device should serve me, not the EU. If I choose to violate EU emergency alert laws, that's on me.

For other use cases, I'd probably agree with you. But you being startled and confused during an emergency because you didn't see the instructions on time can be very dangerous for everyone around you. It's not just on you.

For people suffering from certain mental health issues, the alert itself can cause significant problems for them and others.

If you suffer from panic attacks, for example, and these alerts trigger them, they do not help you, no matter how well intended.

If you suffer from (C)PTSD, and these alerts trigger flooding, they actually make everything worse.

If this were to happen while you are driving, you might even cause an accident.

The world is sadly too complex for simple solutions that assume something to be always good or helpful.

Which is why I believe it's important for the user to eventually control his device.

Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#176

Post by nanidin »

Kiboneu wrote: post #58

Absolutely, they can change this setting, in lots of different ways. Originally emergency services were set up by fields offered by the SIM. Occasionally these settings change, so an update mechanism had to be established. - Android comes with a list of carriers and their required configurations; when the MNC and MMC provided by the SIM match a carrier on that list, Android uses the configuration from that list. This…

See the Verizon OMA-DM spec[0] for one of those remote configuration protocols. It’s mostly used for configuring APN’s and other carrier specific settings to get the phone working on the network.

[0] https://opendevelopment.verizonwireless.com/content/dam/open...

Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#178

Post by burkaman »

petee wrote: post #103
willyt wrote: post #77

I can totally understand why Americans would want to silence these. I'm from the UK and I was in Central Park with my wife and kids when we got an 'Amber Alert' which said something like 'Black Ford SUV reg XYZ123' or something equally cryptic. It was not long after the terrorist attack in Nice where a guy drove a truck thorough a crowd of people walking beside the beach. Everyone's phones started going at the same t…

Ex boyfriend disappearing with a child is totally worth an Amber Alert, and a couple hundred miles is only a couple hours drive by the time they put the alert out...its easy enough to just keep an eye out for a license plate. Nobody is going to know for sure if its a false alarm, or if we'll wind up with a murdered child until after the fact, so why wait or ignore it?

Just want to go against the grain and say that I agree with you and disagree with fellow commenters comparing their phone buzzing once in a while to unwarranted police raids or government-sponsored mass murder.

Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#179

Post by f1shy »

Tomte wrote: post #93
f1shy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No required. In iOS can be disabled.

The highest level cannot. We just had a nationwide test in Germany a few days ago.

I have 2 phones. In one I disabled it, and did not get the alarm. The other one was enabled and received the alarm. It can be disabled. Period.

Re: Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

#180

Post by kornhole »

jorgesborges wrote: post #146
kornhole wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rotate burner SIM's. I never make calls with the SIM. Instead I use jmp.chat if I need to use OTA calls or SMS. I am in airplane mode 99% of the time and use WIFI instead of cellular. I never activate cellular near my home. I am always connected to VPN so that the traffic cannot be analyzed. My phone is anonymous without any identifiers. I think all this mitigates the baseband attacks, but tell me if I am missing s…

Just curious and I admire your commitment, but is there some aspect of your life that demands this diligence, or are you simply principled?

I just don't like people following me around. It is creepy.
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