Comment by feelin_googley | Hacker News Reader

Comment by feelin_googley | Hacker News Reader

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Imagine if the user could compile their own kernels for iOS^W^W [edit] that can control an iPhone. She enables IP forwarding in the kernel configuration. Maybe she can also disable some crucial bits for interacting with the baseband. She only wants wifi to work.

Then she uses this phone with the custom kernel (phone #1) as a gateway for another phone (phone #2). She can easily block ads and other undesired traffic destined for phone #2, using a variety of methods of her choosing (firewalls, dns, proxies, etc.).

She does not use phone #1 for anything other than being a gateway for phone #2. There does not have to be any data of any value to an advertiser generated, sent from, or stored on phone #1 (e.g, logs). It is just a gateway.

Cant do this, but imagine if she could.

At that point of paranoia, wouldn't it be better to just compile the XNU kernel for a different brand of phone?

You're free to compile XNU yourself; it's just the part where you load it onto your iPhone that doesn't work.

...then how does it help that you can compile xnu?

Uh, you can put it on another phone maybe?

Sending all traffic over a VPN to a server of your choosing essentially accomplishes the same thing. It's true that there could be some kind of code in there that overrides this choice, but the implications would be pretty severe.

Looks like she wants Android, specifically, something like LineageOS, or even CopperheadOS for better security.

For example, use an Android phone as "phone #1", the gateway for an iPhone, "phone #2".

Also I used the term "destined" but just to be clear I meant both ingress and egress traffic.

If you want to do this, you can set up a VPN in a cloud somewhere and do the filtering there. Better than maintaining two phones.

"If you want to do this, you can set up a [third party server] in a cloud somewhere..."

s/you/she/g

s/want/&s/

If she were able to use Android as gateway for iPhone on same subnet, "sett[ing] up a [third party server] in a cloud" is precisely what she would be trying to avoid.

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