News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes. Parent comment

Re:Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for... by giantrobot on Thursday September 24, 2020 @03:31PM (#24582573)
You're not going to get open firmware. Cell phones are radio transceivers in the hands of millions of unlicensed users. The only reason any of the cellular infrastructure works is all the devices run tested and certified firmware.

For most cellular basebands the PHY is more powerful and capable than the regulations would normally allow. They only get certified for consumer use because the firmware bounds the operation to the regulated envelopes.

No devices would ever be allowed to be sold on the consumer market if end users could go tweak the firmware or run uncertified firmwares. They shouldn't be allowed to be sold. The difference between a transmitter and jammer is a pretty fine line.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for... by therealx on Thursday September 24, 2020 @05:01PM (#24583604)
True, but anyone mildly determined can get a two year old device, 0day the baseband, and have full access. I remember old iOS exploits that gave access to the full baseband as well.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for... by giantrobot on Thursday September 24, 2020 @07:13PM (#24584765)
That's nothing at all like a consumer device being offered for sale with an intentionally tweakable baseband firmware. Getting a device certified by the FCC (and equivalents) doesn't require that the baseband firmware be 100% free or 0-day exploits. You can hack certified devices in all sorts of ways but you're then breaking the law (wrt to the radio portion) and doing so completely outside a relationship with the equipment manufacturer.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for... by garaetjjte on Friday September 25, 2020 @06:01AM (#24588292)
You can buy various SDR devices without any license, it's not hard to make jammer if you want to.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for... by giantrobot on Friday September 25, 2020 @07:17PM (#24595035)
It's not hard to make a jammer if you're setting out to build one. The problem is when you inadvertently turn your phone into a jamming device because you tweaked some firmware settings.
[ Parent | on HN ]