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posted by martyb on Tuesday August 22 2017, @06:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the Use-only-Official®-Authorized-Parts-and-Repair-Services dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Virindi on Tuesday August 22 2017, @11:48AM (1 child)

    by Virindi (3484) on Tuesday August 22 2017, @11:48AM (#557463)

    Sketchy repair parts are quite a troubling threat.

    For the good of their users, surely major manufacturers, recognizing this threat, will make genuine replacement parts available to the public and repair shops for reasonable prices. I expect this to happen soon, because it is well understood that treating the customer well will keep them coming back to your products when it does come time for an upgrade. Buyers, being generally informed consumers, will prefer the products that provide them the best long-term value for their money, which includes being reasonably possible to repair by a technically skilled user or repair shop.

    In case you were thinking of some alternative, keep in mind that it is well known in the ranks of business that consumers are savvy to evil tricks. Consumers are smart and not easily distracted by glitz when there is a serious technical flaw with the product.

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  • (Score: 2) by cafebabe on Wednesday August 23 2017, @03:02AM

    by cafebabe (894) on Wednesday August 23 2017, @03:02AM (#557825) Journal

    As noted with FTDI serial chips [soylentnews.org], what happens if honestly purchased parts are fakes? The retailer and customer are conned even if both make an effort to obtain premium components.

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