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Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

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Re: Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

#91
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practice of assessing whether a tempting evaluation of "malice" can instead cover evidence of structural faults is part of the effort towards seeing things as they are. And keeps you away from paranoia.

The notion that paranoia is the default emergent state of not assuming incompetence when potential malicious incentives can be easily articulated is just yet another ideological presupposition.

Or.. "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you."

Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Re: Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

#92
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what would be considered a high-value target? Even if warrants are initially mandated for a specific search, couldn’t this erode into, ‘it’s just a quick scan’? What if it’s ‘useful’ to ‘quick scan’ their own President? ‘Confirming their security’. Could this evolve into a subtle shift in the balance of power? In other words, a political crisis? Where the intelligence agencies have informational advantages over…

This is a rambling post... I don't know what argument you're trying to make. Governments will research 0days because other governments are doing it, and it's best if you find them first and work out a defense. You know, in case you want to mess with someone's nuclear centrifuges and to avoid having yours screwed with. Do you think that it should not be legal for the government to investigate a crime? The system is ma…

> The system is made up of people, some of them may abuse their access. Other laws, in theory, will hold them to account.

In theory. The crux of the matter is whether there is significant abuse or not, and how well it is handled once uncovered. Based on history (PRISM, Five Eyes, etc.), I'm not at all optimistic.

Re: Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet there have been plenty of long standing security issues in Linux… Why would you think that a bunch of people volunteering their time would be more motivated to look for security issues and even those that are found, how many would be disclosed responsibly instead of being sold to places like Pegasus?

Nobody said that FOSS was perfect, only better.

Seems like some people really believe that FOSS is basically perfect when it comes to security. "It's FOSS so people would find any serious vulnerabilities". Heartbleed, anyone?

As an aside, I wonder if there's a term for this kind of "nobody says...but some do" thing. Everyone sees their own reality, blah blah. I trust that you're speaking in good faith, but that doesn't account for everyone, and good faith doesn't magically resolve arguments.

Re: Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

#94
To add to this discussion, I must note what I don't see many mentioning here.

One doesn't need to do any shady stuff with baseband or stockpile on zero day vulns.

The current mobile ecosystem is such that any supported device (recieving updates and such) sends its unique identifier to the manufacturer before recieving OTA updates. And devices by default check for updates on a regular bases. Basically the manufacturer can always target and track individual devices. And provision indivisualised signed updates. Not just at the country level but targeted to specific IMEI.

Coming to more concrete examples, Google is known to do AB testing with their Pixel line of devices, setting custom profiles for some users.

Xiomi had previously shown capability to actively disable devices that move outside of legal sale regions.

Samsung uses such capabilities for enterprise devices in Samsung's Enterprise/Knox platform. And consumer devices can be thought of as enterprise devices under the manufacturers domain.

---

So the government only simply needs to send these companies warrants to target, bug and track specific devices or registered customers.

Online platforms are already subjected to data requests from law enforcement which they must conform to (atleast those with supporting warrant).

Some try to recuse themselves from such compelled intrusion of their customers by employing end to end encryption (e2ee).

With this provision and manufacturer cooperation, they could get direct full control of the ends (personal devices). Obviating the need to "break" encryption.

Why deal with a dizzying cloud of services in wide range of jurisdictions when you can have full access to citizen devices with cooperation of a handful of manufacturers.

In summary, this is not just feasible, the elements for an organised remote control system are already present in current smartphone ecosystem. In form of signed updates by manufacturers that can target particular IMEI devices. One just needs this law to wade through the legality issues.

A solution to avoid such sweeping surveillance capability would be to convince manufacturers to not receive identifiable data before provisioning updates. And have a public ledger of officially signed image hashes, like those of of domain certificate transparency lists.

Re: Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

#96

Google Play is a rootkit. Google will fully cooperate with any government. If you use GrapheneOS on a pixel device your bootloader is closed source and the system-on-chip is largely undocumented and impossible to audit without serious resources. So yeah. Shit's fucked man.

Can you expand on what you mean with regards to GrapheneOS? What is the relation?

Re: Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

#98

Google Play is a rootkit. Google will fully cooperate with any government. If you use GrapheneOS on a pixel device your bootloader is closed source and the system-on-chip is largely undocumented and impossible to audit without serious resources. So yeah. Shit's fucked man.

Can you expand on what you mean with regards to GrapheneOS? What is the relation?

GrapheneOS is just about the only Android distro that isn't trash.
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