Google Confirms Android Camera Security Threat: ‘Hundreds of Millions’ Affected | Hacker News Reader

Google Confirms Android Camera Security Threat: ‘Hundreds of Millions’ Affected

forbes.com

62 pointsheshiebee14 comments

How strange that this wasn’t discovered and revealed by Project Zero. How did they miss this?

Also it doesn't seem to be getting as much press as you'd expect for something this widespread :(

Of course hardware switches for the mic/camera/baseband are out of the question...

I would think ≫99% of users would forever keep it switched “on”, and of those, many would think their phone broke down if they accidentally switched it “off”.

⇒ yes, it is out of the question, even though some fraction of users would like to have it.

That won't fix the issue with recording calls, though.

I've had the Pixel 1 for almost three years now. Solid phone. But I always knew it had a manufacturer-installed backdoor. Does anyone know on the progress on GNU/Linux, privacy-focused phones?

Yes, I'm sure a GNU/Linux phone will have fewer bugs... hahahaha

In no particular order, here's the ones I've been following:

-https://postmarketos.org/

-https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

-https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/

I'm the most optimistic about Postmarket in the long run, but the others are actual hardware so there's that.

Since you say you've been following it, any idea what's going on with modems on postmarketOS? Is there any chance of getting working calls/SMS/data working on conventional phones or is that only likely to work on open source stuff like PinePhone?

I think I've laid the foundation for supporting Qualcomm modems with ofono (committed to the pmOS repos.) My device has a vendor kernel, and I helped someone else with a mainline kernel. I haven't seen much movement other than that, maybe due to lack of interest or skill in potential developers. (Each device needs a few custom bits like firmware packaged.) Another problem might be a lack of usable GUI to actually use the modem features, but I'm not up to speed on recent progress.

What backdoor? The flaw described uses a user-installed malicious application to exploit a bug in the permission system (which also must be user approved). I dont see any claim or evidence of a manufacturer backdoor.

With all the news of vulnerabilities in Android recently, as well as the fact that most Android phones come with spyware from the manufacturer preinstalled, it is clear that Android is pure garbage. I hope Microsoft takes note and decides to get back in the game with Windows mobile very soon.

Microsoft doesn't exactly have the best track record with security or privacy either...

They are however miles ahead of Android and IOS. It's too bad that they are now preloading the garbage that is Android on their own Surface mobile devices now. Stopping with Windows Mobile is one of the biggest mistakes Nadella made. It sure helped to make it seem like Microsoft earned more (by cutting costs) but now they're forced to load garbage onto their devices and this will haunt them in the future.

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