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AnarchoDoom wrote (edited )

It's true that whatever's corporate-run telecoms is a control grid. Tho if someone only uses their rooted phone on LineageOS only for wifi (and changing your MAC address often), it's actually even less problematic than most laptops, as there's no known backdoors like Intel IME on phones (but I feel naive saying this, so who knows?).

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celebratedrecluse wrote

Really? The Intel management engine has backdoors, as do AMD equivalent (forget its name). I would be shocked if they...just didn't put these in the phones, which are literal spying machines.

Additionally, all cell phones contain a modem which is almost never well-isolated from the rest of the computer, and which can invisibly monitor and alter various functions of the phone including sensors and data radios etc, without any way for someone on the device to notice. This gives total control not only to the carrier, but also to anyone with a IMSI catcher/spoofer ("Stingray") etc. The countermeasures so far implemented for this are all black boxes of proprietary code, as are the NDAs protecting the IMSI catcher technology companies, so there's no way to verify how bad/widespread the problem is.

Putting phone in airplane mode doesn't do shit if the modem isn't isolated, which it won't be on anything but a phone so suspicious to buy, it will in and of itself make you of interest to the surveillance apparatus.

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AnarchoDoom wrote

so there's no way to verify how bad/widespread the problem is.

I cannot disagree with this. tho. :-(

The hardware side of things is where privacy-focused programmers are hitting a giant wall.

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AnarchoDoom wrote

The modem can be turned off in rooted phone, I think. There's programs used for disabling any service or module. But if that's a modem working underneath the OS in a hidden subsystem of sorts, that's another story...

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celebratedrecluse wrote

It is working underneath it, bootloader is almost never unlocked even if phone is rooted. and there are sub-OS systems that allow the cell modems to function, yes.

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AnarchoDoom wrote (edited )

Most rooting methods these days involve having to unlock the bootloader. Some devices a few years back could be rooted through some exploit or by (lol) asking the company for it.

And yes, when it is unlocked, it is unlocked. I know for having done it many times on different phones. If "ifconfig __ down" cannot turn down the modem, anyone would be able to see that. I did it on the rooted devices I had, and it was able to shut down any modem as far as I know. This is stuff you just cannot do on a non-rooted phone, as just with other Linux distros you need root privileges to do this.

So if what you say is true, it'd be either

1- a hidden modem that ifconfig can't detect, which is some major news.

2- the locked bootloader would be the only trick in the way to full device control, keeping users from switch on/off the modem, by also preventing from rooting, in the first place.

Logically, given how the cell phone companies have been actively locking down bootloaders on phones the past few years (down to being written in chips as read-only, so your only hope is to change the memory chip), it's likely that it's the second option.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

Yes, i mean the second. However, there are elements to the modem which are embedded into the chip, and not accessible through the OS at all. so, both

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