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Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns

reuters.com

181–190 of 427 posts

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

#181

if one company is doing it, they're all doing it. From the snowden leaks we know the NSA puts their own firmware into enterprise hardware. One should assume that they're in american consumer hardware firmware as well

I know right? This post and the report it links reeks of political motive.

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

#182
post #16

We should be up in arms over this. But we should also be up in arms over Apple's "CSAM" plans. Surveillance doesn't belong on our devices. Period. Once it's in, the dictators can clamp down even harder. Over time, freedom atrophies and the window slides closer to totalitarian control. Don't invite the devil in. Scream it away.

There were multiple articles about apple's csm with discussions.

I don’t see Lithuania writing a report or making a fuss about it. Weird.

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

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your scenario, is China leveraging it's own DJI drones? Or DJI drones already owned by hobbyists?

Taking over drones owned by hobbyists. There seems to be a onslaught of positive DJI YouTube videos about how creating a user account is great and easy. Including fake comments praising DJI. Just search on YT DJI Mavic Pro setup. All this is too suspicious for me. I returned the drone for obvious reasons but millions of people are already buying into the ecosystem.

> All this is too suspicious for me. I returned the drone for obvious reasons but millions of people are already buying into the ecosystem.

We're way past the point of no return with all of this.

At some point you just have to accept the new normal. Some of this should be handled by national security teams but I am unsure where we stand (US).

I'm surprised Lithuania of all places takes a firm stand on Chinese phones, meanwhile the US seems to be spinning its wheels. I am not sure what is going on behind closed doors.

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

#184
post #167
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, it's better than US made spyware which cannot be removed from "our" PC CPUs? Best we can do is "disable" these features in the BIOS/UEFI and sleep well, even though we nothing's really stopped. Sorry for the whataboutism but I am lot less concerned about Chinese spyware because I know for a fact that my government serves the EU and the US. All this anti China propaganda is really tiresome. China this, China that.…

As you can see, one gets downvoted quickly when pointing out double standards, or posting anything else that could interfere with anti-Chinese propaganda efforts.

The reply was to my fairly "just the facts" statement, where I didn't characterize what was happening, just explained it.

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

#185

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…

Maybe they just turn offenders along with the evidence over the the PLA, for "review."

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

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the baseband Qualcomm code? Do you think Qualcomm allowed Xiaomi to run their own baseband on it?

Only when CPU is Qualcomm I think. I'm not knowledgeable with QPST/QXDM scenes but it didn't sound like firmware integrity mechanisms on qcom modems are too tight.

Of course the firmware is only Qualcomm if the modem is Qualcomm.

QPST/QXDM allows you to mess with the modems by sending it commands and changing configs yeah. But if you want to flash the firmware that's something else.

Yeah the firmware integrity mechanism are not the best, and there's definitely vulnerabilities in the firmware. But there's still no way of installing unsigned firmware on more recent devices, and I've never come across a way of running unsigned code without it being really obvious.

There was a bug recently that allowed you edit baseband memory from within the OS, but again you'll never be able to hide that from Qualcomm on a million devices.

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

#187
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even apps like Netflix are configured not to be available on Google play if the device is not a certified one. That certification is lost AFAIK on rooting. I have two perfectly good android tablets that can’t run Netflix

Is there anyone who knows how to root a device that doesn't know how to torrent?

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

#188
post #62

I wonder why is anybody still surprised. China has no qualms invading privacy of anybody. They will try any and every way to get whatever they need and they are pretty effective at it. Ever read about making business in China? What we call cheating or stealing is a standard business practice there. If you point it out they will back off and try somewhere else, ad nauseam. It is practically part of Chinese culture and…

> It is practically part of Chinese culture and upbringing.

Wow. Didn’t expect such blanket and shallow statement on HN.

Are you a Chinese yourself? On what basis do you base your assumptions on? Really.

> What we call cheating or stealing is a standard business practice there. If you point it out they will back off and try somewhere else, ad nauseam.

Now this is something that is attributable to human behaviour. Pretty sure it is observable across all kinds of culture and races. But why did you single out the Chinese?

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

#189
post #160
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it is not and has not been surprising for decades. In China there are no private companies. There are only companies that Chinese government lets you run as long as you cooperate with the government.

> No, it is not and has not been surprising for decades. I still recall the Supermicro backdoor chip story, and how once the Bloomberg news broke it was immediately so obvious and so clear that backdoor spy chips were undoubtedly being injected. But a few years have blown by and the story is now a renowned hoax. https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/12/supermicro_bloomberg_... So tell me, is this sort of story also uns…

So... this would be like saying "We have a murderer, we have ample evidence for it on tape and multiple witnesses. But there is also this one person that lied about being witness so then it must mean that the suspect is innocent."

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

#190
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm, like many people here, the IT support for my extended family.

I generally do my best to not only steer them away from invasive devices but also explain why.

Unfortunately this is more and more turning into a situation where I have hardware sent to me, reflashed with a known good rom and then mailed back out.

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