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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

#181

Post by burkaman »

95014_refugee wrote: post #138
petee wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Reductio ad absurdum, wouldn't it be better just to have everyone's phone explode? Chances are pretty good the (alleged) killer will have one on them, so let's just blow everyone up. If you don't, we'll end up with a murdered child, so why not?

Reductio ad absurdum, why not make all communication illegal without the explicit written consent of the recipient? Then you'll never have to be bothered by anyone ever again.

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

#182

Post by neets »

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.…

Ah so that's the hack they were doing in the show Person of Interest

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

#183

Post by izacus »

burkaman wrote: post #178
petee wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The phone "buzzing once in a while" teaches everyone to ignore this buzzing and makes this massively counter productive - people will ignore it when serious disaster happens.

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

#184

Post by kornhole »

jvanderbot wrote: post #105
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…

Your location data. Tower associations can still happen with data "off", since there's plenty of "listen" components. All your home wifi connections are well Geo-located, thanks to other Android users picking up the ESSID as they walk / ride / drive past your house. Your shopping / outings? Forget it, fully known. VPNs hide the content of connections, at least from MITM / eavesdroppers, but server-side data scrapes a…

From https://grapheneos.org/faq: "Connecting to your carrier's network inherently depends on you identifying yourself to it and anyone able to obtain administrative access. Activating airplane mode will fully disable the cellular radio transmit and receive capabilities, which will prevent your phone from being reached from the cellular network and stop your carrier (and anyone impersonating them to you) from tracking the device via the cellular radio. The baseband implements other functionality such as Wi-Fi and GPS functionality, but each of these components is separately sandboxed on the baseband and independent of each other. Enabling airplane mode disables the cellular radio, but Wi-Fi can be re-enabled and used without activating the cellular radio again. This allows using the device as a Wi-Fi only device."

When I am at home, I am WIFI only. When I am out, WIFI & bluetooth are off. This takes some discipline at first but then just becomes habit. I know the spot on my commute home where I switch my settings.

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

#185

Post by kornhole »

bengale wrote: post #169
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…

I’ve always assumed that behaviour like this is so unusual is would motivate a closer look by security services.

The only thing it evidences is that someone is smart and values their privacy.

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

#187

Post by matheusmoreira »

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…

What about the Android derivatives like LineageOS? Can't they just patch these stupid "features" out?

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

#188

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

bengale wrote: post #169
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…

I’ve always assumed that behaviour like this is so unusual is would motivate a closer look by security services.

Criminals the security services are looking for are not that smart. If they were, they wouldn't have been criminals in the first place.

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

#189

Post by MengerSponge »

kornhole wrote: post #184
jvanderbot wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your location data. Tower associations can still happen with data "off", since there's plenty of "listen" components. All your home wifi connections are well Geo-located, thanks to other Android users picking up the ESSID as they walk / ride / drive past your house. Your shopping / outings? Forget it, fully known. VPNs hide the content of connections, at least from MITM / eavesdroppers, but server-side data scrapes a…

From https://grapheneos.org/faq : "Connecting to your carrier's network inherently depends on you identifying yourself to it and anyone able to obtain administrative access. Activating airplane mode will fully disable the cellular radio transmit and receive capabilities, which will prevent your phone from being reached from the cellular network and stop your carrier (and anyone impersonating them to you) from trackin…

BTW habitually switching at the same time and place is terrible opsec. It leaks a ton of information.

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

#190

Post by matheusmoreira »

burkaman wrote: post #181
95014_refugee wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reductio ad absurdum, wouldn't it be better just to have everyone's phone explode? Chances are pretty good the (alleged) killer will have one on them, so let's just blow everyone up. If you don't, we'll end up with a murdered child, so why not?

Reductio ad absurdum, why not make all communication illegal without the explicit written consent of the recipient? Then you'll never have to be bothered by anyone ever again.

Is that supposed to be an absurd proposition? Because that is something I want. Stuff like advertising should be straight up banned, and it should be considered abuse to get a phone call from someone you have not explicitly whitelisted, especially corporations and governments.

No one should presume they have an IRQ line to your brain and attention. They don't get to interrupt you with bullshit you couldn't care less about.

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