alt Hacker NewsNot sure how I feel about this. Motorola seems to be the exclusive provider of encrypted cellular networks and associated devices to the Israeli military [1][2].
I'm under the impression that basebands still require a proprietary/binary blob, basically rendering the security features of the underlying Open Source OS useless, since it sits between the user and outside connectivity.
How can GrapheneOS ensure that there are no hidden backdoors (ie: Pegasus-like spyware, which was created by ex-IDF soldiers via NSO Group), etc, in the baseband?
[1] https://www.whoprofits.org/companies/company/3808
[2] https://www.motorolasolutions.com/newsroom/press-releases/mo...
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Motorola phones are made by Motorola Mobility, not Motorola Solutions.
Motorola Mobility is largely owned by the Chinese government.
The Chinese government is not gonna share your data with Israel/USA.
Motorola Solutions != motorola mobility
Ill leave you to investigate how != they are
Let me give you another perspective - you cannot fight a foreign state that wants to hack your device and access your personal data. Even Apple iPhones, who often taut how "secure" their devices are, remain vulnerable to state spywares. A secured device, at most, will protect your data from the police or lay cracker or malware, who lack the means to use more sophisticated methods to access your data. When Android forks (like Lineage OS or Graphene OS) advertise that their Oses are more "secure", with better "data protection", what they mean is that their OSes try and prevent data leakages to the OS vendors (like Google or Apple or other BigTech) or to online services integrated with the OS or through system and user installed apps. In other words, "privacy and security" primarily means that they try and prevent surveillance capitalism.
None of it matters. If the device has a SIM card (virtual or physical), it will execute commands sent over the network. It's required by the GSM/LTE standards. The best you can hope for is to have separate SoC for the OS and separate SoC for the GSM/LTE connectivity, but that means double the power consumption.
See presentation at DEFCON21 about SIM cards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31D94QOo2gY
Will Graphene not require Moto to offer an IOMMU like Pixels do?
> Not sure how I feel about this. Motorola seems to be the exclusive provider of encrypted cellular networks and associated devices to the Israeli military [1][2].
makes me feel good about it.
Perhaps you may be interested in Librem 5 or Pinephone, both of which have hardware kill switches for modem and available schematics. The latter even has most of the modem software freed.
I'd say you're paranoid. Nobody cares about you, and they won't invest billions just so they can see your hot nude pictures. There are much easier ways to get information out of a phone, no need for a backdoor.
If there were ever any backdoor in some phone, it would have been found. No smartphone company is gonna take that chance that someone will find their backdoor, it will literally kill the company.
In the same way they can(not) do it on Pixel phones - and I would be surprised if Google was not already cooperating with the state actors. You do what you can. Even open source drivers (which are not gonna happen when operating within tightly regulated radio bands) won't help if there's a hardware backdoor.