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People with cracked touch screens or similar smartphone maladies have a new headache to consider: the possibility the replacement parts installed by repair shops contain secret hardware that completely hijacks the security of the device.
The concern arises from research that shows how replacement screens—one put into a Huawei Nexus 6P and the other into an LG G Pad 7.0—can be used to surreptitiously log keyboard input and patterns, install malicious apps, and take pictures and e-mail them to the attacker. The booby-trapped screens also exploited operating system vulnerabilities that bypassed key security protections built into the phones. The malicious parts cost less than $10 and could easily be mass-produced. Most chilling of all, to most people, the booby-trapped parts could be indistinguishable from legitimate ones, a trait that could leave many service technicians unaware of the maliciousness. There would be no sign of tampering unless someone with a background in hardware disassembled the repaired phone and inspected it.
The research, in a paper presented this week at the 2017 Usenix Workshop on Offensive Technologies, highlights an often overlooked disparity in smartphone security. The software drivers included in both the iOS and Android operating systems are closely guarded by the device manufacturers, and therefore exist within a "trust boundary." The factory-installed hardware that communicates with the drivers is similarly assumed to be trustworthy, as long as the manufacturer safeguards its supply chain. The security model breaks down as soon as a phone is serviced in a third-party repair shop, where there's no reliable way to certify replacement parts haven't been modified.
The researchers, from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, wrote:
The threat of a malicious peripheral existing inside consumer electronics should not be taken lightly. As this paper shows, attacks by malicious peripherals are feasible, scalable, and invisible to most detection techniques. A well motivated adversary may be fully capable of mounting such attacks in a large scale or against specific targets. System designers should consider replacement components to be outside the phone's trust boundary, and design their defenses accordingly
Source: Ars Technica
Also covered at: Engadget.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Tuesday August 22 2017, @07:05AM (12 children)
The damned Google Assistant, which I had disabled months ago, pops up today "Can I tell you a joke?"
The complexity of the software and hardware is such, that no one has an overview any more. Devices are always online. The motivations of the software and hardware manufacturers do not align with the interests of the customer.
I do my best to maintain some degree of privacy and security, but: If you cannot trust the hardware or the software, and it's too complex to check yourself, what can you do? At best, you can eliminate the obvious threats. If a major company or a government wants to spy on people, really, WTF can you do? Become a digital hermit?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @09:35AM (8 children)
How can I completely power down a Galaxy 8?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @10:49AM (7 children)
Putting it in a bucket of water for an hour should do the trick.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Tuesday August 22 2017, @01:08PM (6 children)
The Galaxy phones are designed to be waterproof. I suggest using a hammer liberally across the entirety of the device to expose the water detect off switch.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday August 22 2017, @06:16PM (5 children)
The Galaxy S6 is not waterproof. 🇺🇸
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Tuesday August 22 2017, @07:31PM (4 children)
True, but only so much water can enter through the headphone jack per second. If you really want to ensure that your phone is off _right_now_, use the hammer to expose the switch and then toss it in a bucket of water. If you can wait 30 minutes, you can do what I did and put it in the washing machine's steam cycle.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Tuesday August 22 2017, @11:12PM (3 children)
Why? Why not wipe it and sell it? Or, just throw it in a dumpster? Is this a joke?
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Wednesday August 23 2017, @03:49AM (2 children)
I wish it were a joke... I threw my pants in the wash and 30 minutes later I couldn't find my phone. Low and behold, it was eventually found in the wash, still in my pants.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Wednesday August 23 2017, @07:14AM (1 child)
So it never worked again?
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Wednesday August 23 2017, @11:01PM
Correct. I even disassembled the device and stuck the boards in a bag of rice. It never booted again. Now the replacement device (same make and model) I had in my pocket when I fell waist deep into a lake. That one was disassembled and sun-dried. About 4 hours later it was working again.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @01:46PM
is when you take a crap. And that is only assuming you haven't placed an Amazon Echo (or equivalent) or brought a computing device into the bathroom with you.
Hell if you're one of those people with a TV in every room, you might even have a videocamera and microphone recording every time you drop your pants and get ready to take a dump. I wonder how long until somebody gets arrested for exposing themselves in a bathroom under the expectation of privacy. The way the current surveillance state is going I can't forsee it taking too much longer.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Tuesday August 22 2017, @06:47PM
There really *isn't* anything you can do. Or at least, very little a conscious consumer can do. The only option really, is that supply chains need to be audit-able and steep penalties applied to violators. But that costs money and effort, which raises prices, and the average person cares more about the up-front price than anything else.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday August 23 2017, @11:51AM
Hah, similar story here...I had the damn thing disabled, never used it in the two years that I owned this phone...then all of a sudden every time I plug in the aux jack for my car, the fuckin thing starts going "I'm sorry, I didn't hear that, please try again" or whatever.
Long story short, I wiped it and switched to LineageOS. Works much better now :)
Now it' s just constantly complaining that the kernel or play services or whatever else doesn't have internet access. Because I blocked it. And it works fine, so apparently it doesn't need it.