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dropping CCs at request Anyway, all said I agree with you. But the concerns you mention here are also true of Android devices. I would rather have physically replaceable radio modules and then work on reveng or memory isolating the drivers. twitter.com/DanielMicay/st

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Big difference between a device with components that are strongly hardened, highly audited and have good ongoing security support vs. the complete opposite. Also, portraying it backwards by misinterpreting how DMA / IOMMUs work is just wrong.

Lance R. Vick ( @lrvick@mastodon.social )

@lrvick

Sep 11, 2020

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@DanielMicay

You can't claim hardware is secure you can't see the firmware for. Tomorrow's update could be hostile. You present a fair argument though. We either design to distrust the radios, or we might as well blindly trust their updates. I am convinced here.

Daniel Micay

@DanielMicay

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@lrvick

Devices you're talking about have entirely closed source hardware and firmware. If you choose components that are known to be insecure and also don't apply fixes to known security vulnerabilities, backdoors are a non-issue, because you have the front door wide open to attackers.

5:20 PM · Sep 11, 2020Twitter Web App

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and

You're also once again misrepresenting closed source software as a black box. It isn't, and in fact, if you're looking for malicious, hidden backdoors, I do not really see how you're any better off trying to find them hidden in source code vs. from the final assembly code.

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and

There is a whole compilation pipeline leading to that assembly code and all of the fancy language / compiler features, etc. are tools for the attacker to hide / generate their backdoor. Also, really, when it's full of unintentional vulnerabilities, how is any of this relevant?

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Lance R. Vick ( @lrvick@mastodon.social )

@lrvick

Sep 11, 2020

Replying to

@DanielMicay

There are no alternative components today and we both know it. This is why I like that they are separate hardware modules I can physically replace once an alternative exists with hope to find SoC feature to jail drivers in the short term.

Replying to

So how does it help to use an SoC platform with far worse security and isolation, and then ship it in a way that's not set up in a proper way for production and is a massive step backwards from the mainstream status quo? I don't get it.

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