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Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

reuters.com

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Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#111

Post by EMM_386 »

titzer wrote: post #107
EMM_386 wrote: post #98

I just helped someone remove the built-in Chinese malware from a US Government provided phone. It's insane. https://blog.malwarebytes.com/android/2020/07/we-found-yet-a...

This is what kinda terrifies me about today's digital landscape. Now it's so cheap to hide surveillance capabilities (spyware, hidden microphones or cameras) that bad actors can just embed surveillance into every cheap device, hoping just by sheer numbers to get one into a sensitive area (e.g. Pentagon, Langley), and then remotely activate surveillance. With the computational capabilities of today's data centers, the…

> It's downright dystopian.

It sure is. No stopping it now though.

I'm old enough to remember being able to go to someone's place and expect privacy. These days literally anything can have an HD cam.

Not great for paranoia but what can you do?

> They could just be monitoring everyone,

They are. Snowden already proved this, and we apparently got into that particular situation to keep pace with China.

Not my job.

Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#112

Post by hef19898 »

gpderetta wrote: post #36
amiga-workbench wrote: post #2

I think you would have to be mad to leave the stock ROM running on a Xiaomi phone, IIRC they were caught logging peoples browser history a few years ago. Several models have mainline LineageOS support, I'm running Lineage on my Mix 2S and hope to have years worth of updates going forward. The hardware is really good value as long as you install an non-tainted OS.

I was stupid enough to buy a Xiaomi phone without enough due diligence. Aside from all spying that is going on, the software is abysmal. The problem with replacing the OS is that I believe most banking apps I use will stop working. Might just need to write this phone off.

Banking works under CalyxOS with microG. It doesn't like VPNs so, which I can understand somewhat.

Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#113

Post by sudosysgen »

mschuster91 wrote: post #99
sudosysgen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't exactly do it without permission though. You need to crack the bootloader for the baseband and that's way easier said than done and immediately noticeable.

> You need to crack the bootloader for the baseband and that's way easier said than done There have been more than enough cases of people poking holes in bootloaders, including secret services. For what it's worth, Huawei and Xiaomi can be considered as part of the Chinese CCP dictatorship and I'd expect them to have access to such exploits. > and immediately noticeable. How is an user supposed to notice a modified b…

There's a difference between poking a hole the device bootloader and the baseband bootloader. The second is wayyy more lockdown and has a tiny attack surface.

A user can directly download the baseband image from the chipset using for example QFIL. Then you can check if it's signed with Qualcomm's key or another. Exploiting this would require Xiaomi to hide two baseband firmwares in the baseband firmware which isn't feasible, and it would also require them to completely rewrite the baseband bootloader instead of just exploiting it.

But even then you'd be able to read the eMMC and notice that there are two baseband firmwares. If you want to figure it out, you're free to buy any Xiaomi phone, read the eMMC, and check how many baseband images there are, then you'll be able to definitively know. Let me know if you do it.

When I said immediately noticeable I meant by Qualcomm, not by the end user though. They have contractual obligations to lock down their baseband and their licensing system relies on it so they have a large incentive.

Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#114

Post by reginold »

hef19898 wrote: post #94
reginold wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I get what you mean, my bad. You're saying the above poster "typing in Free Tibet and nothing bad happened" doesn't prove anything. Yep, agreed.

Exactly that, I could have phrased it better I think.

Yes, rather than "it doesn't matter", something like "typing in a phrase yourself isn't relevant as this feature is likely disabled for you".

Believe that's why you're being downvoted. The way HN moves comments around also so yours was not right next to the comment you replied to, which didn't help.

Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#115

Post by netcan »

"Censorship" is part of a whole here, and it's not obvious what to call that whole.

This is a complex of censorship, data gathering, personalization and such. A few months ago microsoft accidentally turned on some china settings globally, and "tank man" disappeared from search results. Tank man is conspicuous, I wonder what less conspicuous switches can be flipped.

The main arteries of media & communication are strategic assets. These responsible for near 100% of Alphabet & FB's revenue. Ad businesses, app stores, etc. Google pay Apple more revenue for search defaults than MSFT earn in gross from their "2nd place in the market" position. Google pay OEMs and telecoms to be their default app stores. The complex is all about bottlenecks,

Control over these is the financial asset behind several of the world's most profitable companies. It is a primary intelligence target/asset. It's a major part of china's information/narrative control mechanism... has been for a while. The thing that's changing is that china's mass is starting to cause tides elsewhere.

This game is a "ring of power" game.

Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#116

Post by mrweasel »

tmoravec wrote: post #69
tasubotadas wrote: post #52

Are there any good non-Chinese smartphone besides Samsung? Preferably someone who delivers a stock android?

iPhone?

Depending on your definition that’s also a Chinese phone. You might be able to get one build in India, but that require a lot of effort.

The problem is that you’re more or less screwed if you trust neither China nor Google. Generally speaking the iPhone is your best option, but partly due to a lack of options.

Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#117

Post by umvi »

EMM_386 wrote: post #98

I just helped someone remove the built-in Chinese malware from a US Government provided phone. It's insane. https://blog.malwarebytes.com/android/2020/07/we-found-yet-a...

Is that even enough though? Couldn't china put in shadow processors or other hardware-level surveillance similar to Intel's management engine? And it would be extremely difficult to detect, let alone disable or mitigate.

Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#118

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

bitcurious wrote: post #79
ignoramous wrote: post #45

There are no details really as to how Xiaomi censors those terms. If one does not use the bundled-in browser / app-store, I doubt Xiaomi can censor anything at all in other browsers unless they MiTM with client-cert. OTOH, many popular non-browser apps (at least the ones that matter) pin certificates, so even Lenovo-esque shenanigans wouldn't work [0]. What can they possibly be doing in the firmware or the ROM to bre…

Off the top of my head, theu can censor at the keyboard level, at the SMS level, and at the camera level: https://www.reddit.com/r/Xiaomi/comments/pgk8y3/xiaomi_camer...

Free tibet", long live Taiwan independence", or "democracy movement".

i sent this to a friend who owns a xiaomi phone and asked him to resent this back to me via sms. the message appeared just fine.

note: i am from india so this might not be enabled on the phones here for now

Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#119

Post by avodonosov »

reginold wrote: post #78
avodonosov wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right

I don't understand what you're saying or intending with your comments. There are 32 pages in the report. I'm curious about steps to replicate as well, generally for stuff like this.

I mean the piece quoted above is the correct original source. I wanted to post exactly this snippet myself.

From that a possible test case can be to open this HN thread in MiBrowser and see the webpage blocked due to the "free Tibet" phrases posted here (assuming MiAdBlacklistConfig includes English versions).

If anyone has a Xiaomi phone and is willing to accept the MiBrowser terms of use, please try.

Re: Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

#120

Post by photochemsyn »

lmilcin wrote: post #110
AlexandrB wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the focus on China with respect to privacy is misplaced. This is a problem with many tech companies now. Just look at how smart TVs hoover up data from their customers. There's a danger to painting this as a problem with China's tech industry because it implicitly lets other tech companies off the hook for their horrendous privacy practices. > What we call cheating or stealing is a standard business practice…

> I think the focus on China with respect to privacy is misplaced. This is a problem with many tech companies now. Yes and no. Yes, it is a problem with many tech companies, I agree. But the way China does this is something completely different. Tech companies do this for their profit. China as a country exploits every single avenue to steal information and protect their position.

Stealing information and protecting their position is pretty common in the corporate world, in fact that's how many corporations ensure their continued profitability.

What you have in China is equivalent to "US Government" + "Big Tech" - "Bill of Rights".

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