Over the Air: Exploiting Broadcom’s Wi-Fi Stack

Re:Over the Air: Exploiting Broadcom’s Wi-Fi Stack by metricodus on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @02:33PM (#14035852)

My 73 year old mom is quite happy with the 2014 Moto G I got her three years ago. I guess she'll need something new now (No idea if it has a BCM wifi chipset, but I'm guessing so - how do you even find this out without having physical access to the device?).

I'm thinking Apple may be the way to go this time, because they maintain security updates for older devices for longer. (Seems like 5+ years.)

Another way of looking at this is that lacking security updates create unnecessary electronic/chemical pollution/waste. I think the EU should tackle this. I'm sure they could come up with some scheme for penalties for lacking security updates. (Does anyone know of any initiative in this area?)

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Re:Over the Air: Exploiting Broadcom’s Wi-Fi Stack by nandhp on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @04:38PM (#14036972)

According to GSM Arena, the 2nd generation Moto G uses a Qualcomm MSM8226 Snapdragon 400 chipset, so it shouldn't be affected by this issue.

http://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_moto_g_(2nd_gen)-6647.php

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Re:Over the Air: Exploiting Broadcom’s Wi-Fi Stack by mjg59 on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @07:41PM (#14038326)

There are plenty of Qualcomm based devices that use Broadcom wifi.

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Re:Over the Air: Exploiting Broadcom’s Wi-Fi Stack by metricodus on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @05:26PM (#14037368)

Thanks! :)

(I still reckon my mom needs a new phone though, there are other less severe exploits out there for this non-updated device.)

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Re:Over the Air: Exploiting Broadcom’s Wi-Fi Stack by cbhl on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @06:44PM (#14037949)

Moto seems to put out a new Moto G every year, and I've had good success with just replacing the old ones with the new ones.

Yes, an iPhone is better, but if you're on a budget and don't have those security needs, the Moto G seems fine.

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Re:Over the Air: Exploiting Broadcom’s Wi-Fi Stack by metricodus on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @07:26PM (#14038237)

If you don't need something secure, get a Moto. Check.

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Re:Over the Air: Exploiting Broadcom’s Wi-Fi Stack by danieldk on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @04:01PM (#14036626)

I'm thinking Apple may be the way to go this time, because they maintain security updates for older devices for longer. (Seems like 5+ years.)

The iPhone SE has a reasonable price and is only a year old. E.g., here in Germany you can still get the 16GB version from before last month's storage bump for 399 Euro. It has the same SoC as the iPhone 6s (A9).

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Re:Over the Air: Exploiting Broadcom’s Wi-Fi Stack by flukus on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @07:35PM (#14038286)

My moto e got patched a few weeks ago and now crashes several times a day. It seems Motorola is trying to train users not to update their systems.

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Re:Over the Air: Exploiting Broadcom’s Wi-Fi Stack by Wicher on Thursday April 06, 2017 @01:29AM (#14048176)

But on the other hand they're very friendly when you want to install alternative firmware (eg cyanogenmod). They let you unlock the bootloader and then you can flash at will.

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