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Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

arstechnica.com

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Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#91

Post by abraham »

Flere-Imsaho wrote: post #77
j1elo wrote: post #48

> Notably, the Pixel 10 series is moving away from physical SIM cards. Is it? I hadn't followed news of the new Pixels. I don't like the idea of modernizing this and going full eSIM. It will introduce a lot of new friction, somehow I don't doubt it. Just now arrived to Mexico for a quick trip and grabbed a prepaid SIM from a 7-11 in the airport. All quick and simple. I doubt things would be so seamless when not havin…

eSIMs feel like a solution waiting for a problem. Consumers are happy with physical SIMs, you obtain one, you put it in your phone then you forget about it until you swap your phone. I'm sure eSIMs are a good idea if your aim is to gain even more control over our personal devices.

eSIMs are nice in that you can install an app and it can activity service immediately. You don't have to go to a store or wait for a physical SIM to be mailed to you.

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#92

Post by embedding-shape »

hollerith wrote: post #90
overfeed wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be a total mindfuck if it turns out that Graphene is less secure[1] than stock Pixel, and this is all part of an ANOM-style honeypot operation that has Feds hyping it up, to trick interesting targets into adopting a less-effective security posture. 1. Such as via slower 0-day responses, for instance. This is a thought experiment, I'm nor alleging that this is what it is.

Anyone can build GrapheneOS from source code, which I doubt is true of any law-enforcement honeypot.

Exactly what someone who sets up a honeypot targeting nerds would want you to think.

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#93

Post by nkrisc »

gleenn wrote: post #28
bitwize wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government has ways of twisting the arms of uncooperative people/organizations into providing all the backdoors they need. Everything from increased tax and regulatory scrutiny to "discovering" CSAM on executives' computers or phones. The government does what it wants because it's the government. Mere laws generally don't stand in its way for long.

I think this is a very negative idea to promote: that laws should can be subverted. Everyone should believe that laws work and when they don't we should work to fix that, not assume that it can never be fixed.

This idea is based on empirical evidence.

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#94

Post by embedding-shape »

abraham wrote: post #91
Flere-Imsaho wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eSIMs feel like a solution waiting for a problem. Consumers are happy with physical SIMs, you obtain one, you put it in your phone then you forget about it until you swap your phone. I'm sure eSIMs are a good idea if your aim is to gain even more control over our personal devices.

eSIMs are nice in that you can install an app and it can activity service immediately. You don't have to go to a store or wait for a physical SIM to be mailed to you.

Also nice for people who frequent different countries, easier to switch by tapping a button in the phone than having to replace the physical SIM card each time. And no more forgetting the right SIM or not having a tiny thing to get the SIM card out in the first place (or having to borrow someone's earring).

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#95

Post by AJ007 »

overfeed wrote: post #89
markus_zhang wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read from an old HN post that three letter agencies hate graphen OS. The author heard it from defcon or some similar conference. I couldn’t find the post anyway :/ I think it is buried under one of the posts that discuss Defcon and Blackhat.

Wouldn't it be a total mindfuck if it turns out that Graphene is less secure[1] than stock Pixel, and this is all part of an ANOM-style honeypot operation that has Feds hyping it up, to trick interesting targets into adopting a less-effective security posture. 1. Such as via slower 0-day responses, for instance. This is a thought experiment, I'm nor alleging that this is what it is.

It wouldn't be the first honeypot phone, haha.

What bothers me is that when phones are stolen, they end up in other countries. Maybe you are a nobody, but if it is trivial to extract the information on a phone then there is more than an identity theft issue. Generative AI makes all of this shit way worse than it was even a year ago.

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#96

Post by magtux »

Youden wrote: post #67
windexh8er wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be very clear: this is still Google's choice. Google could build a phone that they can't be compelled to do anything to after the phone is sold to their customer, but Google alone chooses to not invest in the security of the phones they're selling to their customers. Because: what is good for the government is now equally good for Google. Do we not remember how Google immediately enabled TLS everywhere, interna…

Google brings to mind the ship of Theseus - many of the core decision makers have changed over the years, to the point where it's arguably a different company. The biggest change was 2015 (two years after your article): the founders and Eric Schmidt stepped back and a couple of other folks retired, leading to a new CEO, CFO and CBO. Their opinions on how to best run the company were quite different to their predecess…

> the founders and Eric Schmidt

Still have huge influence as demonstrated by them stepping in to lead parts of the AI push. Ezra Klein actually has an interesting perspective that the owner class of Silicon Valley has moved right a lot more and the workers are still the same politically causing companies to behave differently. My experience in Tech largely tracks. I would say the middle management and manager class are largely good people and try to navigate the world as best they can although they will choose to not rock the boat whenever possible. The tolerance for activism has just evaporated so we don't hear as much about it anymore.

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#97

Post by tavavex »

prima-facie wrote: post #81
purpleidea wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unfortunate problem with eSIM is that you can't swap it between phones.

You absolutely can. But it does need an internet connection for that. Which actually makes eSIM more secure than regular SIM.

It can be more secure, but it also feels like the kind of "improvement" that's ripe for exploitation. When you put in a step where you have to ask your service provider for permission to swap the SIM, buckle up for the inevitable development of them asking for a $5, $50 or $100 "service fee" so they consider allowing it.

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#98

Post by overfeed »

hollerith wrote: post #90
overfeed wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be a total mindfuck if it turns out that Graphene is less secure[1] than stock Pixel, and this is all part of an ANOM-style honeypot operation that has Feds hyping it up, to trick interesting targets into adopting a less-effective security posture. 1. Such as via slower 0-day responses, for instance. This is a thought experiment, I'm nor alleging that this is what it is.

Anyone can build GrapheneOS from source code, which I doubt is true of any law-enforcement honeypot.

See my footnote in original comment.

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#99

Post by tomrod »

gleenn wrote: post #28
bitwize wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government has ways of twisting the arms of uncooperative people/organizations into providing all the backdoors they need. Everything from increased tax and regulatory scrutiny to "discovering" CSAM on executives' computers or phones. The government does what it wants because it's the government. Mere laws generally don't stand in its way for long.

I think this is a very negative idea to promote: that laws should can be subverted. Everyone should believe that laws work and when they don't we should work to fix that, not assume that it can never be fixed.

Arrows impossibility theorem means someone will always be unhappy, and sometimes those people make the laws too.

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#100

Post by precommunicator »

j1elo wrote: post #48

> Notably, the Pixel 10 series is moving away from physical SIM cards. Is it? I hadn't followed news of the new Pixels. I don't like the idea of modernizing this and going full eSIM. It will introduce a lot of new friction, somehow I don't doubt it. Just now arrived to Mexico for a quick trip and grabbed a prepaid SIM from a 7-11 in the airport. All quick and simple. I doubt things would be so seamless when not havin…

And on the other hand, you enter Montenegro by car outside of touristy season and no petrol stations carry sim card then, and you have to find some kiosk in city center that does, wasting so much time in the process, relying on offline maps or spotty wi-fi.

You enter Serbia or Faroe Islands, and to get a SIM you have to find the operator booth, hope it's not in city center where parking is close to impossible, wait in a queue, they don't accept card, go find an ATM, pay extra for foreign withdrawal, pay extra ATM fees...

e-SIM just solves that, you simply buy it online before. And if you forget, I have a bit more expensive "any country" e-SIM that will allow me to do so.

Before e-SIM was a thing mobile roaming outside of EU was on the extreme expensive end. Now, I don't even get to use my e-SIM capabilities, as my network operators have pretty cheap package rates to just roam outside of EU. I wonder if widespread of e-SIM has anything to do with that.

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