Critical Bluetooth vulnerability in Android

Re:Critical Bluetooth vulnerability in Android by zozbot234 on Friday February 07, 2020 @06:46AM (#22265098)

Note that "Xiaomi Mi A" devices are the only ones that are similar to Android One. Most Xiaomi devices have a custom UX and additional weirdness. (Among which is the need to "sign up" online for bootloader unlock and wait for a timeout period. They do this because resellers used to ship bootloader-unlocked versions with "unofficial" mods of sorts, often with customers being none-the-wiser. Not an issue on the 'Mi A' line, for whatever reason.)

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Re:Critical Bluetooth vulnerability in Android by krn on Friday February 07, 2020 @07:11AM (#22265226)

> Most Xiaomi devices have a custom UX and additional weirdness.

That's true. Just like Samsung, Huawei, OnePlus, and any other Android manufacturer except Nokia, Xiaomi maintains its own Android ROM, called MIUI[1]. It's not as vanilla as Android One, but at least it also receives monthly security patches.

> Among which is the need to "sign up" online for bootloader unlock and wait for a timeout period. They do this because resellers used to ship bootloader-unlocked versions with "unofficial" mods of sorts, often with customers being none-the-wiser. Not an issue on the 'Mi A' line, for whatever reason.

It's not an issue with Xiaomi Mi A line, because Xiaomi's reputation is not affected as much if there is something wrong with a smartphone that is not running its custom ROM.

Nokia has only recently started allowing to unlock the bootloader of some of the models, and has a similar process[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIUI

[2] https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/bootloader

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Re:Critical Bluetooth vulnerability in Android by mavhc on Friday February 07, 2020 @10:31AM (#22266885)

According to Nokia: Unlocking a device means you may lose some of its functionalities, including – but not limit to – telephone, radio, audio, video, payment, encryption and DRM.

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Re:Critical Bluetooth vulnerability in Android by krn on Friday February 07, 2020 @11:13AM (#22267396)

As with probably all Android devices, unlocking the bootloader breaks the SafetyNet[1].

And any custom Android ROM requires drivers to be able to completely support the hardware of a particular device.

[1] https://www.howtogeek.com/241012/safetynet-explained-why-and...

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Re:Critical Bluetooth vulnerability in Android by mavhc on Sunday February 09, 2020 @01:53PM (#22283632)

Why would that break the ability to make phone calls though? Unless they mean now you have the capability to break it, not that unlocking it may break it

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