Boeing’s Black: This Android phone will self-destruct | Hacker News Reader

Boeing’s Black: This Android phone will self-destruct

arstechnica.com

47 pointskurren33 comments

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Boeing bought Narus in 2010 http://boeing.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=20295&item=1294

That same Narus was who enabled the NSA to illegally spy on telecoms last decade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

Would you trust a "secure" phone from people like that?

Your trust is probably irrelevant.

This is the phone that the people who don't trust you, give to you.

The phone isn't for normies like you and I. It's targeted specifically for people in the defense industry who have a need to connect to SIPRnet and other similar defense/government networks. People commenting here think they are prospective customers who will be spied on, but the truth is you will not be permitted to buy or use this phone.

Government agencies, like it says in the article.

the same narus that brought you narus insight which was an awesome piece of technology, and makes me wonder about the all the outrage we recently had.

one might not like them, but it's one amazing tech company.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narus_(company)

Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Great. Powering oppressive governments everywhere.

Just like Linux and Apache Hadoop are.

It's from a defense contractor, so it's probably not very good, yet extremely overpriced.

And yet the defense industry will purchase it in droves, thanks to the revolving door and all the special connections that Boeing has.

Anyone buying a phone from a company with links to the US military-industrial complex wants their heads examining. And that includes the US govt.

Don't VZW and ATT have links to the US mil-indz complex?

This phone is for the US military-industrial complex to buy for their employees.

Said complex is the intended market.

All phones should have this, just like modern laptops do (or are supposed to). All data should be encrypted, keys inside a tamper-proof chip. If anything has been changed (say, cover removed), then you need to enter the recovery key to certify the device is OK again. If tampering happens while device is active (say, it gets dropped hard enough to knock the cover off), then the device wipes RAM/powers off.

My ThinkPad nominally offers this kind of protection.

If I can't see what the phone is running, how sure can I be it'll not be used by a third party to spy on me? Boeing's promise?

> how sure can I be it'll not be used by a third party to spy on me? Boeing's promise?

It's not really aimed at you, it's aimed at the US government....

I can think of some vendors who offer source sharing agreements on their closed products for auditing purposes. I'd speculate Boeing would offer the same if the contract is valuable enough, especially if its DoD writing the check.

Unless you are given the full build chain and deploy to your own devices, there is little guarantee the software you were given is actually the one running on your devices.

If there is a backdoor, who says there is only one third party? Boeing's promise to third party #1?

It is spying. It's a defence contractor phone so probably everything done on it is recorded because governments spy on their employees. Baseband/GSM stack is likely wide open to exploitation by other governments.

How do you ever trust any cell phone? The OS the consumer interacts with is the least interesting one on the phone as far as spying goes.

You think you are their target customer?

I was expecting a small explosive charge in the battery or something cool. This was just lame.

Called it (kinda) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7065897

"...this idea seems like a solid game plan for Blackberry? They could rename their company "Black" ala P-Diddy v just Diddy. :)" Got the name right, wrong company. Nobody is perfect.

To be violently hyperbolic; besides impressing non-tech managers who've watched too many Nicholas Cage films, what the fuck is the point of this?

If you have the money to commission a set of devices that self-destruct when tampered with, surely you can afford to have someone put together an Android build with encrypted data partitions?

Because at the military level, all encryption is assumed to be compromised. Plus, it is assumed the phone may contain data of national value, so it assumed an adversary would spend unlimited resources to crack the encryption.

For example, lets say "unlimited" is $100 million dollars. How many groups would spend $100 million to lets say, get details about the missile defense system in Taiwan? Plenty.

As other posters have stated, this is not a phone for anyone but only very specific gov't employees.

http://www.howtogeek.com/141953/how-to-encrypt-your-android-...

Additional details here: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/deep-b...

Why Boeing? Why not Motorola? It would seem to come more naturally to Moto; I mean if they built jetliners there would have been no reason to invent the phrase "jet lag".

No one read the damn article. You will not be spied on while using this phone BECAUSE YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO BUY THIS PHONE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

But the people spying you will be using this phone.

exploding batteries, Mission Impossible style :D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner_battery_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_transfer

man event:

http://www.boeing.com/assets/pdf/commercial/airports/faqs/ai...

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