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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

#221

Post by Scoundreller »

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…

Can’t easily disable them in Canada. And all alerts are sent at “presidential” level, while the issuers fail to geo-target them, so you get alerts for “abducted” (usually child custody dispute) several hundred km away.

Buuuuut, these alerts are LTE/5G only, so I’ve set up an iPhone automation to switch my phone to 3G in the evening and back to whatever in the morning to avoid alerts at night. I’ll cry when 3G gets shutdown.

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

#222

Post by Scoundreller »

withinboredom wrote: post #206
matheusmoreira wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't really matter what the laws say. When I tell my computer to do something, I expect it to be done, no questions asked. If I tell it to violate a law, I expect that law to be violated. I have free will and the computer must obey that will, not impose somebody else's will on me.

You’re using a utility and you must accept the terms to use that utility. There’s probably some verbiage in your carrier agreement about it. You can’t disable 911/112 just because you don’t like it either.

9-1-1 doesn’t usually call me at odd hours though.

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

#223

Post by t0bia_s »

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.

If there is emergency, I'm sure you'll find out very soon that something is happening. We are usually not living in lone solitudies.

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

#224

Post by kube-system »

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…

The baseband is an entirely separate SoC that is a blackbox outside of the control of GrapheneOS. And your radios are solely under the control of that system. GrapheneOS just asks it nicely to do things on its behalf.

All of these privacy focussed phone OSes tread lightly on the fact that there are a grand total of zero modern open source basebands in existence.

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

#225

Post by [deleted] »

TreeRingCounter wrote: post #171
iforgotpassword wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#226

Post by Retric »

kornhole wrote: post #204
MengerSponge wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It is the same general location about half a mile from home where I flip over. This is to ensure location from cell tower triangulation does not identify my home and therefore me.

It’s all about your threat model.

Suppose you wanted to find someone that aways turned on their phone on at ~8:15 AM and found someone that always turned their phone off at ~8:10 AM within 15 miles. How difficult would you say it was to make this connection?

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

#227

Post by kube-system »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #220
qbasic_forever wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you saying that a phone manufactured in 2022 can have its firmware remotely changed to record microphones? Yes, court records show the FBI has and continues to explicitly do this. Leaks from folks like Snowden show the NSA/CIA have done this too. > Specifically can your whatsapp/signal audio calls be recorded by FBI remotely in this manner? The baseband firmware is at a level 'below' the operating system of the…

I am not at all familiar with the hardware design of phones, so I want to be very clear in my understanding. Are you saying that the electrical signals from the microphone and to the speakers pass through the baseband chip before/after going to the main chip on the phone? Or that the baseband chip has separate access to the microphone and speakers?

There are varying architectures, so it depends. But at a minimum, the baseband at a minimum has low level access to anything that goes over the network. In some implementations, the baseband can just read straight from main system memory if it wants.

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

#228

Post by MichaelZuo »

kelnos wrote: post #91
warkdarrior wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do not like the regulation, fight to change it. Do not expect your devices to do the fighting for you.

A better response to these laws would be that the device should just stop working if the settings I have selected conflict with local law. The cell towers are free to refuse to allow my phone to connect. They should send some sort of message to me to tell me what I'd need to do in order to comply with local law and be allowed on the network. But of course, that wouldn't be convenient, and a lot of people would be con…

You can do that now with nearly all of the big carriers around the world.

You just need to sign a service level agreement along with paying for them to develop that feature and deploy it on your phone.

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

#229

Post by kube-system »

john61 wrote: post #40
nicholasjarnold wrote: post #33

> I must say I strongly dislike losing control over my own device. It feels dystopian to me. Even with a rooted device where perhaps you personally coded up the ROM you are still missing a piece which is the binary blob that runs the baseband radio. That firmware is, afaik, not something which exists in any sort of open-source or rootable manner. It's a closed blob running proprietary software on your phone, and it r…

For the PinePhone you can install a free OS running the Baseband Processor: https://hackaday.com/2022/07/12/open-firmware-for-pinephone-... Probably illegal and the firmware running the radio hardware is still proprietary.

That's partially open source software on the broader Quectel EC25-G modem, but not the Qualcomm’s MDM9207 baseband that the modem uses.

> Not everything is open in this firmware. The baseband firmware, aka the RF bits known as ADSP firmware, remains closed and not yet reverse-engineered by anyone – you’re not gonna be running OpenBTS on this modem yet.

> The TrustZone kernel remains closed too – my understanding is that it’s signed by Qualcomm.

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