Tell HN: Your Android carrier can remotely turn settings on

Post by bobsmooth » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 9:26 PM UTC

kornhole wrote: post #95

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.…

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…

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 9:31 PM UTC

siftrics wrote: post #172

Scoundreller wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by squokko » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 9:36 PM UTC

kornhole wrote: post #95

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.…

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…

Post by sgc » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 9:42 PM UTC

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #192

RussianCow wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they were, they wouldn't have been criminals in the first place. What does intelligence have to do with whether someone is a criminal? There are dumb criminals and smart criminals; I'm not sure what the correlation here is.

I think most criminals are dumb. Quick google search shows average IQ of a criminal is 85.

Post by Dma54rhs » Mon, Dec 12, 2022, 9:49 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #87

msingh_5 wrote: post #23

These are emergency broadcast alerts. Different countries have different laws on these - and in some countries you might not even be able to disable them. Just because its listed under "Apps & notifications"/"Wireless emergency alerts", it doesn't mean they are "user settings". Its not necessarily the local "carrier" that turned the settings on, its more that connecting to a cell tower in a particular jurisdiction ca…

If it's not a user setting, then it shouldn't be listed with all the other user settings, and labeled as something the user has control over. At the very least, any setting that can be overridden by the carrier should have a note or warning next to it, stating that. The fact that it's so unclear leads me to wonder what other settings -- perhaps some related to my security or privacy -- the carrier can modify without…