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

Blackphone

blackphone.ch

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 210 posts

Re: Blackphone

#151

Post by IgorPartola »

ansible wrote: post #137
IgorPartola wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. If I come to a carrier and say "Here's a codebase for your baseband. It's OSS, well tested, secure, and supported. Buy support from me." why won't they go for it. Surely, an OSS solution is cheaper for them than developing an in-house crap solution that I'm sure it is now. Also, is there any harm in just open sourcing their baseband code? It seems to me that it's worthless without the license to u…

If I come to a carrier and say "Here's a codebase for your baseband. The carriers don't want baseband code, they just want finished products to sell. It's OSS, well tested, secure, and supported. Buy support from me." why won't they go for it. Surely, an OSS solution is cheaper for them than developing an in-house crap solution that I'm sure it is now. OK, assuming you get a current-generation baseband chip for free…

OK, thanks for the explanation. So it sounds like this comes down to vendors competing and not wanting to have their code exposed for fear that others might copy their chip + code when the vender is the one paying all the fees to make the chip + code usable. I guess this is similar to Nvidia vs AMD (vs Intel I suppose), except perhaps even more entrenched and without much hope of a community reverse engineering a solution.

This sucks. Do we have any alternatives? Are there any completely open radio chips in development?

Re: Blackphone

#152

Post by rdl »

chillingeffect wrote: post #110
rdl wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is you don't use baseband functionality at all in the main high-side device. It can be a PDA, connected over USB to a separate radio. There's no way the radio can do anything particularly evil except if there are implementation bugs over USB (API problems with whatever interface you build between them, most likely), but at least that can be inspected by end users and problems found/fixed. These highly-integr…

I believe you have the right idea. To isolate audio/message encryption in one box, stream it via IP to cellular (LTE/4G/etc) towers in another box. Then, the customer puts those two boxes into one box. It could basically be done today with an Android PDA running VoiP app only, connected over wifi to a cellular hotspot in one's pocket. The next evolution would be to replace the wifi with a wired network.

I'm probably going to submit this + some specific privacy/location/etc. protecting services as a turnkey thing to DC/BH 2014. Also looking at a kickstarter for something on the "travel router which isn't a complete piece of crap" front.

Re: Blackphone

#153

Post by aidenn0 »

brudgers wrote: post #103
kybernetyk wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I'd say the real privacy issue is the user who installs and runs all those Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. apps and freely shares his private information with everyone. You can't really prevent that with technology unless you start to educate kids/users better. But who am I kidding? People will forfeit their private data for shiny stuff as long as there will be shiny stuff and private data.

There are two different connotations of 'privacy' that are often conflated in discussions about Facebook, Google, etc. Conflating them probably obscures the more important connotation to the benefit of such companies' bottom lines. The first connotation is the one my mother warned me about. It's Facebook photos of that tequila weekend in Tijuana and those two PM Tuesday tweets from the beach bar when I called in sick…

You can disable third-party cookies (I do so), and watch how many websites cease to function.

Re: Blackphone

#154

Post by MWil »

I thought it was funny, considering the top comments, that if I cntrl+F for "zimmerman" it takes me all the way to halfway down the page

Re: Blackphone

#155

Post by rbanffy »

yitchelle wrote: post #86
panacea wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Blackphone is re-shaping the landscape of personal communications. Pre-ordering begins..." How is it re-shaping anything before it's started shipping?

"Pre-ordering begins..." is letting folks their idea validating strategy. I wonder what the threshold is going to be, 100, 500, 1000 or more pre-ordered phones.

It also helps to build a list of people who have something to hide ;-)

Re: Blackphone

#156

Post by rbanffy »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #95

Renowned cryptographer believes his 'Blackphone' can stop the NSA http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/15/5310710/phil-zimmermann-si...

Unless it's possible to power down the communications processor, install fully open source software on it (from the boot and up), and disconnect it from any antennas, I don't trust it at all.

Re: Blackphone

#157

Post by dblotsky »

"You can make and receive secure phone calls; exchange secure texts; exchange and store secure files; have secure video chat; browse privately; and anonymize your activity through a VPN."

People. It's really secure, private, and anonymous, ok?

Re: Blackphone

#158

Post by ansible »

IgorPartola wrote: post #151
ansible wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I come to a carrier and say "Here's a codebase for your baseband. The carriers don't want baseband code, they just want finished products to sell. It's OSS, well tested, secure, and supported. Buy support from me." why won't they go for it. Surely, an OSS solution is cheaper for them than developing an in-house crap solution that I'm sure it is now. OK, assuming you get a current-generation baseband chip for free…

OK, thanks for the explanation. So it sounds like this comes down to vendors competing and not wanting to have their code exposed for fear that others might copy their chip + code when the vender is the one paying all the fees to make the chip + code usable. I guess this is similar to Nvidia vs AMD (vs Intel I suppose), except perhaps even more entrenched and without much hope of a community reverse engineering a sol…

So it sounds like this comes down to vendors competing [...] I guess this is similar to Nvidia vs AMD (vs Intel I suppose) [...]

Yes, exactly. Sometimes just seeing how something is organized, or the API can give significant clues to how it is done. It is much harder to start from scratch.

Do we have any alternatives? Are there any completely open radio chips in development?

See my parent post. First you need a few billion dollars to buy some spectrum.

Re: Blackphone

#159

Post by yetfeo »

andor wrote: post #128
yetfeo wrote: post #30

Mozilla could take great strides towards this type of phone if they cared. Integrate tor, Whisper Systems RedPhone and SercureText, HTML tracking disabled, etc. I'm surprised their Firefox OS looks and works so much like every other phone out there.

Mozilla would have an awful lot of security work to do. If you check the CVEs for Firefox, there was, on average, a remote code execution vulnerability each week in the last 3 months. http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search-results?query=firef...

They have to do that work anyway due to Firefox OS.
Post reply on HN