Re: Privacy Concerns with UbuntuPhone

On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 07:42:35 Thomi Richards wrote:
> It's also worth noting that this is not specific to Ubuntu Touch - *all*
> open source phones, including phones that run Firefox OS, Tizen, and MeeGo
> run proprietary baseband code (IMO this fact reduces the article you linked
> somewhat - it's now a case of "Hey, turns out Ubuntu Touch has the same
> business constraints as every other mobile OS on the planet" - hardly news
> worthy).

yes, what Thomi said - the real problem with ALL phones is the proprietary 
base band stack which can potentially do evil things to the rest of the phone 
because it has access to all memory bypassing the MMU.

It's not just the phone manufacturers though, it's likely that cell companies 
would not allow phones with easily hackable baseband stacks on their networks 
(they wouldn't let you have a SIM) - the problem is that cell services use 
protocols that depend on all phones playing  nicely with each other and their 
equipment, one hacked phone could easily bring down a cell tower or two (I 
used to do US cable protocol engineering that basically has similar sorts of 
issues, one bad box can bring down a neighbourhood)

I think the real solution to this problem is hardware architecture that 
isolates the baseband part of the phone and treats it as potentially hostile 
(rather than giving it free range through memory)

	Paul

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