Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GrapheneOS and forensic extraction of data (2024)

discuss.grapheneos.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 208 posts

Re: GrapheneOS and forensic extraction of data (2024)

#101

Post by themaninthedark »

codys wrote: post #48
IlikeKitties wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no such thing like "bad government" and "good government". Of course there is, compare the government of Finland to that of North Korea. Just because there are shades of grey and human institutions are generally susceptible to corruption greed an power politics doesn't mean there aren't governments that are different not only in degree but in kind.

It is strange how folks are refusing to admit they can even _evaluate things_ in a bunch of cases. We're seeing that here, but I've also noticed it in other posts on HN: a disagreement with the position of the article is framed not as a distinct examination which comes to different conclusions, but instead commenters claim the post author was foolish in even attempting to evaluate the thing the post is about. To some…

It feels like a nihilistic take partnered with the view that everyone has a valid viewpoint.

Re: GrapheneOS and forensic extraction of data (2024)

#102

Post by raziel2p »

tcfhgj wrote: post #63
AlgebraFox wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've clearly explained here. I'm not sure how many people would keep asking the same question without even doing a simple web search. https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices

not sure if it is an explanation or a justification

what's the difference?

Re: GrapheneOS and forensic extraction of data (2024)

#103

Post by jbstack »

estimator7292 wrote: post #71
jbstack wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the fact that there's a subjective definition problem here (how do we decide what people "need"?), I think this an unrealistic view. By this definition, every government that has ever existed or ever will exist is a "bad" government because no government can ever tackle every single problem 100% of the time. Many problems are extremely difficult to solve (e.g. global warming), and others simply cannot be s…

Everything is bad if we simply redefine "good" to mean "immaculately perfect and infallible in literally all conceivable scenarios"

Sure. But the original commenter's point that whether a government is "good" or "bad" is subjective because it's dependent on people's views. Other commenters objected to that and appear to see it as objective: a government is either clearly good or clearly bad, and there's no debate to be had.

The reality however is that all governments are a mixture of good and bad, and different people will see that mixture in different proportions. One person might overlook the fact that their government funds the Israeli military because their government does plenty of other "good" things to make up for it. Another person might find that to be a completely unacceptable compromise.

Re: GrapheneOS and forensic extraction of data (2024)

#104

Post by b112 »

danans wrote: post #35
jbstack wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the fact that there's a subjective definition problem here (how do we decide what people "need"?), I think this an unrealistic view. By this definition, every government that has ever existed or ever will exist is a "bad" government because no government can ever tackle every single problem 100% of the time. Many problems are extremely difficult to solve (e.g. global warming), and others simply cannot be s…

> Sure, you can tax more up to a point, but eventually that tap runs dry and you're forced to reallocate existing resources. Since the 1980s, we have been consistently taxing less. If the tap is dry, it isn't because of over-taxation - it's because there's a reservoir of wealth hoarded by the relatively few. A even cursory glance at the trajectory of wealth distribution will make that clear.

Since the 1980s, we have been consistently taxing less. If the tap is dry, it isn't because of over-taxation - it's because there's a reservoir of wealth hoarded by the relatively few.

A even cursory glance at the trajectory of wealth distribution will make that clear.

Others have attempted to refute your above statement, but it's not really relevant. Your response does not really align with the parent post, because at no point did the post you replied to say "We need to tax less all the time!" or even "we need to tax less!" or "we cannot have better health care".

None of these things were said, advocated for, or espoused as a position.

Instead, they said "you cannot solve everything ever, and everything has tradeoffs", along with "because if you try, you run out of money no matter what".

This seems like a fair statement. Would you care to address that?

Re: GrapheneOS and forensic extraction of data (2024)

#105

Post by danans »

b112 wrote: post #104
danans wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, you can tax more up to a point, but eventually that tap runs dry and you're forced to reallocate existing resources. Since the 1980s, we have been consistently taxing less. If the tap is dry, it isn't because of over-taxation - it's because there's a reservoir of wealth hoarded by the relatively few. A even cursory glance at the trajectory of wealth distribution will make that clear.

Since the 1980s, we have been consistently taxing less. If the tap is dry, it isn't because of over-taxation - it's because there's a reservoir of wealth hoarded by the relatively few. A even cursory glance at the trajectory of wealth distribution will make that clear. Others have attempted to refute your above statement, but it's not really relevant. Your response does not really align with the parent post, because…

> Instead, they said "you cannot solve everything ever, and everything has tradeoffs", along with "because if you try, you run out of money no matter what".

> This seems like a fair statement. Would you care to address that?

Sure. That's like saying fire is hot and water is wet. The fact that tradeoffs obviously exist doesn't mean we can make meaningful changes to improve things.

Re: GrapheneOS and forensic extraction of data (2024)

#106

Post by b112 »

npoc wrote: post #83
jbstack wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the fact that there's a subjective definition problem here (how do we decide what people "need"?), I think this an unrealistic view. By this definition, every government that has ever existed or ever will exist is a "bad" government because no government can ever tackle every single problem 100% of the time. Many problems are extremely difficult to solve (e.g. global warming), and others simply cannot be s…

There is no man-made global warming crisis. The earth is in fact one of the coldest periods in history. Thoroughly explained here: https://youtu.be/KDwCUAueLUU What the "man-made global warming crisis" is , is an example of how a corrupt/captured state will overreach and control the people for its own gain through manipulation. Many governments are captured by the now global financial system that has almost unlimited…

Nonsense. The Earth used to be a boiling lump of magma at once point before it cooled, but guess what -- humans can't live on liquid rock. Warmest or coolest is irrelevant over the lifetime of the Earth. What matters is "modern humans".

Global warming is indeed real. Effective change doesn't have to cost a dime. An example is forcing people to buy electric cars at some point. The government spends nothing, people just buy new cars when their old cars expire, now people are driving new cars. Solved.

(you may notice that incentives are gone in most countries now)

And if the weirdos would stop trying to crush every tiny part of carbon emissions, dams provide an immense amount of cheap, clean power once built. We can even make concrete using low-emission methods. Regardless, dams are far better than coal or gas (yes they are random anti-concrete weirdos), so moving on a path to 'better' is laudable and helpful.

(Yes, anti-concrete weirdos are either useful idiots or secret lobbyists. Why? Well, my city puts more concrete into new basements in a single year, than go into a dam that lasts 50 years. Yet I only hear people blather on about dams, which would save immense pollution from coal, the worst polluter it would replace. Also, I've now out-conspiracied the conspiracy guy I'm replying to.)

Power plants expire, whether gas, coal, etc, and instead of revamp you slowly build new, and expire the old.

None of this has to cost. There is no cabal to enact global warming related change.

Re: GrapheneOS and forensic extraction of data (2024)

#107

Post by bri3d »

Johnny555 wrote: post #80

>...because it is doing far more hardening than iOS against these attacks. iPhones also have security element, but the companies developing attacks, had successfully bypassed secure element throttling from Apple for years (and are doing the same with Samsung and Qualcomm Is it true that Pixels are more hardened against brute forcing the security module and that iphones (and other phones) are easily bypassesed by thes…

I don't think I agree with this assessment; I have a lot of respect for GrapheneOS but they are very prone to this type of puffery, especially in face of criticism.

The information in this and other GrapheneOS articles comes from a leaked copy of the Cellebrite support matrix which is shipped with their end-user (law enforcement) devices, so it's a point-in-time look at one vendor's capabilities in one product line.

At the time this article was written, Cellebrite had brute force-based passcode access to iPhones before the iPhone 12 (prior to the Secure Storage Component), and supposedly had support for the iPhone 12 on iOS versions prior to 17 in development (vs. just under research), while they had no access to bruteforce on Android devices using the Titan M2 (Pixel 6 and later).

The general trust model is pretty similar: the user's passcode is entangled with (predictable) secure entropy and used to derive a key encryption key which can unlock the filesystem. Firmware running on a secure processor rate-limits passcode attempts.

Apple's implementation is well-documented here: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/secure-enclave-sec5... .

Google's implementation is called Weaver and I'm less sure how it works cryptographically, but it seems conceptually similar.

For more about the support matrix: https://osservatorionessuno.org/blog/2025/03/a-deep-dive-int...

Overall I would say that a modern iPhone running the latest iOS and a modern Pixel running GrapheneOS represent the absolute state of the art in protection, and seem to have pretty similar public support from forensic vendors. The article is right that essentially everything else is junk; hardware vendors by and large seem to really struggle to implement secure software (including ROMs and bootloaders).

Re: GrapheneOS and forensic extraction of data (2024)

#108

Post by npoc »

n4r9 wrote: post #84
npoc wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no man-made global warming crisis. The earth is in fact one of the coldest periods in history. Thoroughly explained here: https://youtu.be/KDwCUAueLUU What the "man-made global warming crisis" is , is an example of how a corrupt/captured state will overreach and control the people for its own gain through manipulation. Many governments are captured by the now global financial system that has almost unlimited…

Requiring people to watch a 1hr+ video to understand your argument is a big red flag.

Why's that? A topic as big as this takes quite a lot of refuting.

If you're interested in finding the truth, then you'll at least begin watching it to see if it offers any promise.

Re: GrapheneOS and forensic extraction of data (2024)

#109

Post by danans »

jbstack wrote: post #98
MrOwen wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you coming to the conclusion that it will run dry? For example, in the US, arguably the most prosperous period here was in the first half of the 1900s. It is when Roosevelt's New Deal went into place and the US experienced extraordinary growth and prosperity. Do you know what also coincided with this? The marginal income tax rate. From wikipedia: > For tax years 1944 through 1951, the highest marginal tax rat…

Consider what would happen if the tax rate was 100% across all tax types, and you'll probably see then how there's an upper limit to how much tax revenue can be raised by a government. Would you get up and go to work if you got to keep 0% of your earnings? How about if you got to keep 1% of them? 2%? Surely we can agree that there is a threshold, even if we don't agree where that threshold is. That's all there is to…

> tax resources are limited and therefore all governments must ultimately allocate those limited resources and cannot simply spend unlimited amounts on any "good" projects that they'd like.

That's a strawman. There are no proposals for a 100% tax across tax types. There is an argument for reversing the direction of the last several decades in which taxes on the wealthiest have been dramatically cut.

Re: GrapheneOS and forensic extraction of data (2024)

#110

Post by octo888 »

fsflover wrote: post #86
megaloblasto wrote: post #26

I've always found it strange that GrapheneOS only runs on Google hardware. Can anyone explain this choice?

I agree with you, it's a dangerous and suspicious choice, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45100831

I'm suspicious of your comment. You got beef or had a run in with the people who run the project...?
Post reply on HN