This is the second time I’ve come across this story.
If you look closely, random people are not being taken aside for being seen with a Pixel as the headline would have you believe.
What is true is that Graphene OS on a Pixel is a popular, easy setup that can’t be cracked open with Cellebrite et al., and that makes the piggies very sad.
Methinks someone wants readers to fear using Graphene OS.
Also, Graphene has that duress mode, you set a pin/password that when entered locks out storage, does a wipe, while leaving grapheneOS in place. It seems US citizens maybe needing this in the future.
If autocrats manage to fully take over, they’ll just enact a policy that assumes you’re guilty of the charges if the phone, for whatever reason, gets wiped (especially after entering a code you provided). Your “right to silence” isn’t gonna last forever.
You can’t fix an abuse of power issue with a technological solution, its only a bandaid, and it will stop working when blood keeps gushing out (aka: the instutions of democracy starts to completely fall apart)
It needs to be a smarter mode where it only removes specified content (apps, browser history, and saved passwords maybe), so that the phone looks plausibly used when it unlocks.
Hide an encrypted version of the history in a bunch of memes that make up the entirety of the fake history? Sounds like a great idea if they don’t spend too much time looking.
Where can I find these hacktools ? I have a whole damn bunch of android 9 phones I can’t root because their bootloaders are non-unlockable and that pisses me off.
Back in my day, hackers would just publish that shit in 2600 zine, now they’re all corporate sellouts selling on 0day to the fucking fed.
I doubt these tools would help you. They are primarily for pulling data off devices, spying on them, or controlling them.
Even if you could buy them as a private individual you wouldn’t want to pay that cost. There might be pirated versions, but most who have use of these tools have no interest in pirated software.
There are extremely skilled people who make a living finding vulnerabilities, so there’s not a lot of low-hanging fruit left and those who find serious vulnerabilities have generally worked hard to do so.
When a single exploit can pay enough that you could pay off all your loans, buy a house, or not have to work again for years, or maybe ever. Why would you go through all the trouble of finding it to release it publicly and get nothing? Especially when it’s going to be used by these shady companies either way.
I’m not saying exploit selling is morally right, it certainly isn’t, but if I was offered millions of dollars to do the wrong thing, I’m not sure I would turn that down.
This used to be funded by academic and research outfits, functional releases justified their funding and that was enough.
But some unethical entities have started paying big money for exploits as weapons, profiting from their put into profitable use.
So the academics now just sell them on gray and black market to the highest bidder.
This is the second time I’ve come across this story.
If you look closely, random people are not being taken aside for being seen with a Pixel as the headline would have you believe.
What is true is that Graphene OS on a Pixel is a popular, easy setup that can’t be cracked open with Cellebrite et al., and that makes the piggies very sad. Methinks someone wants readers to fear using Graphene OS.
Also, Graphene has that duress mode, you set a pin/password that when entered locks out storage, does a wipe, while leaving grapheneOS in place. It seems US citizens maybe needing this in the future.
If autocrats manage to fully take over, they’ll just enact a policy that assumes you’re guilty of the charges if the phone, for whatever reason, gets wiped (especially after entering a code you provided). Your “right to silence” isn’t gonna last forever.
You can’t fix an abuse of power issue with a technological solution, its only a bandaid, and it will stop working when blood keeps gushing out (aka: the instutions of democracy starts to completely fall apart)
It needs to be a smarter mode where it only removes specified content (apps, browser history, and saved passwords maybe), so that the phone looks plausibly used when it unlocks.
90% of cases they want your chat history and maybe search queries. You would need a decoy history because no history is very suspicious
Hide an encrypted version of the history in a bunch of memes that make up the entirety of the fake history? Sounds like a great idea if they don’t spend too much time looking.
Lol I’m gonna look sus af since I have zero friends I don’t talk to anyone.
Where can I find these hacktools ? I have a whole damn bunch of android 9 phones I can’t root because their bootloaders are non-unlockable and that pisses me off.
Back in my day, hackers would just publish that shit in 2600 zine, now they’re all corporate sellouts selling on 0day to the fucking fed.
You could ask Moxie Marlinspike of Signal messenger. I heard he has an older version of cellebrite laying around.
I doubt these tools would help you. They are primarily for pulling data off devices, spying on them, or controlling them.
Even if you could buy them as a private individual you wouldn’t want to pay that cost. There might be pirated versions, but most who have use of these tools have no interest in pirated software.
There are extremely skilled people who make a living finding vulnerabilities, so there’s not a lot of low-hanging fruit left and those who find serious vulnerabilities have generally worked hard to do so.
When a single exploit can pay enough that you could pay off all your loans, buy a house, or not have to work again for years, or maybe ever. Why would you go through all the trouble of finding it to release it publicly and get nothing? Especially when it’s going to be used by these shady companies either way.
I’m not saying exploit selling is morally right, it certainly isn’t, but if I was offered millions of dollars to do the wrong thing, I’m not sure I would turn that down.
This used to be funded by academic and research outfits, functional releases justified their funding and that was enough. But some unethical entities have started paying big money for exploits as weapons, profiting from their put into profitable use. So the academics now just sell them on gray and black market to the highest bidder.
Grapheneos is only installable on unlocked phones. Specifically pixels. There is a complete list on their site
xda probably has that