Re:California Governor Signs Law Requiring a ‘Kill Switch’ o...
by jrochkind1 on Monday August 25, 2014 @11:22PM
(#8225554)
Ooh, ooh, and how long until someone hacks into the cell phone network in order to have the power to 'kill' others phones. Chinese army hackers? Sounds like something that would appeal to them. And lots of other people.
But maybe there could be a succesful campaign against this on 'national security' grounds, it makes our communications network less secure, chinese army hackers are gonna get into it and kill peoples phones! Meh, probably would not work.
Re:California Governor Signs Law Requiring a ‘Kill Switch’ o...
by icebraining on Tuesday August 26, 2014 @02:43AM
(#8225963)
I can't really think of any feasible way for the user to be only person who can initiate a remote shutdown.
(Sure, you can probably come up with some hypothetical scheme involving public key crypto, but we know they're not doing that, and if they did most users wouldn't be able to figure out how to kill their own phones either).
You don't need any crypto. The user sets a killswitch password in her phone, then the command must provide the same password. If the user hasn't setup any password, the command works without one.
Re:California Governor Signs Law Requiring a ‘Kill Switch’ o...
by jrochkind1 on Tuesday August 26, 2014 @09:31AM
(#8226954)
Okay, how much do you wanna bet there's no way they're going to do this?
(Sure, you can probably come up with some hypothetical scheme involving public key crypto, but we know they're not doing that, and if they did most users wouldn't be able to figure out how to kill their own phones either).
So, yeah, the technology is clearly going to be able to be used so the government (or really, the cell provider or anyone that can convince/force the provider company to do something) can shut down any cell phone, or even all cell phones in a given specified area (that is, currently in contact with specified access points). Of course, they could just shut down the towers too, maybe more likely to be used against selected numbers or lists of numbers.
Anyhow, that was my first thought too. On seeing the headline, I even first thought that was the _point_ of the legislation, you know for 'national security'.