The best ThinkPads - which are used in many corporations - use Intel's vPro technology. Intel is offering those corporations to "remotely wipe the hard disk - even if laptop is turned off and not connected to the internet - in case the laptop is stolen". This technology requires presence of WLAN and SIM card. So it bypasses the corporate IT completely...

The concern is not literally who owns the network, but whether or not the organization can effectively manage the traffic. There are secure ways to manage that setup, as opposed to, a personal phone where the organization has zero control.

This comparison is absurd.

A minority of laptops are thinkpads, a fraction of those have SIM cards, and, finally, attacking that subsystem requires serious skills and the benefits are dubious.

Compare that with android/ios phones, which 99% of people have, and have a large underground market of backdoors that anybody can buy and install. Not to mention all the spyware that users and OEM install.

It's the difference between finding an expliot for gmail vs finding one for a small discord server. Your attack on gmail has a bigger universe of targets if successful.

Uh, discord is a centralized service. You find an exploit for a "small discord server" you can probably use it on all servers.

Yes, and that's why NSA successfully intercepted google's fiber optic cables and so on.

This is not equivalent, though.

Here are some questions I don't have the answer to, but would be relevant:

- Are these SIMs always active?

- Do they communicate broadly with the internet, or just specific servers?

- If they communicate with specific servers, where does an attacker have to be exploit these communications?

- Does this technology allow for the arbitrary execution of code, or can it only wipe the hard drive?

There are probably more contraints here, but the basic point I'm driving at is that the challenge here is not equivalent to the challenge of exploiting an old android or iOS device. Is there some risk, yes, but it really doesn't seem to be the same amount of risk.

Last century we had low bitrate codecs for full bandwidth speech over dialup modems. I think that little traffic would be shapeable.

Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CRA_yE4D-s&t=35

====

Wow Setara, fit 5. Da Komante Da Bik Im Du Xite Efa.

(most Expanse asteroid belters prefer dubs to subs)

Leya: Setashang Lando?

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...

Leya: To tenye timting mali to. Wamali, ye to tenye imalowda.

I agree about the 3rd party internet connection.

I disagree about the GPS chip. GPS chips are receivers only. You cannot track someone through GPS unless you bug their device and make it send location through another channel. Yeah, that 3rd party internet connection :)

Also, GPS only works outdoors. Not in a corporate boardroom.

Mobile phones use GPS, to be sure, but they also discern location by WiFi radio locations. If your phone is connected to BigCorpWiFi, then we know where you are. Even if you are in the BigCorp building connected to BigCorpWiFi with SmallCorpWiFi from next door detectable, we know which side of the building of BigCorp you are located. If you're on the street corner and your phone can see the WiFi networks of WiFi-1, WiFi-2, WiFi-3, we now know which street corner you are on without accessing the GPS chip. If the WiFi-2 signal is stronger, we know which side of the street you are on.

Forget WiFi. Walking down a street with lots of retail shops while Bluetooth is enabled receives pings from all sorts of trackers/beacons. We know where you are.

TL;DR: If you think location data is only discernible by using GPS, you are incorrect.

I'm thinking about that "OK Google" feature that's probably designed to be listening 100% of the time.

That's present on many Windows laptops now too, isn't it?

The other thing is that executives commonly carry a corporate and a personal device for various reasons.