Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday March 26 2019, @09:28AM   Printer-friendly
from the remember-DIP-switches-and-jumpers? dept.

Like with our Librem laptops, our Librem 5 smartphone will also feature kill switches; but unlike the laptops it will have three kill switches, not just two:

        cameras and microphone
        WiFi and Bluetooth
        cellular baseband

Later in this post I’m going to describe an exciting new feature for our Librem 5 phone we are calling “Lockdown Mode” that extends our normal kill switches to provide even more security and privacy

[...]One big challenge when protecting your privacy on a phone is that, unlike an average laptop, a phone is full of more sensors and other hardware that could be used for tracking and spying. A lot of security research over the past decade has demonstrated just how much information can be derived by seemingly harmless sensors that are included on a phone.

[...]While we could add kill switches for every individual piece of hardware, having three kill switches already pushes the limits with respect to space on the phone, the complexity of the hardware and the overall user experience. So if you set the upper limit on kill switches to three, there are a number of different ways you can address the problem with these extra sensors including:

        Only disable those sensors with software
        Group sensors with one or more existing kill switches
        Lockdown Mode

We have thought through all of these different options, among others, and we decided that it was better to offer the option for extra security to those who really need it. We have selected a solution we are calling Lockdown Mode, that gives people who need this extra level of protection the option to turn all sensors off easily, without imposing extra complexity on an average user.

[...]To trigger Lockdown Mode, just switch all three kill switches off. When in Lockdown Mode, in addition to powering off the cameras, microphone, WiFi, Bluetooth and cellular baseband we also cut power to GNSS, IMU, and ambient light and proximity sensors. Lockdown Mode leaves you with a perfectly usable portable computer, just with all tracking sensors and other hardware disabled.

https://puri.sm/posts/lockdown-mode-on-the-librem-5-beyond-hardware-kill-switches/


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday March 26 2019, @10:30PM (4 children)

    by hemocyanin (186) on Tuesday March 26 2019, @10:30PM (#820378) Journal

    There is too much junk there: "powering off ...." this clearly suggests shutdown on signal, ie, software switch. "Cut power" -- that sounds more like a physical disconnection but it may not be. The marketing-ese is getting in the way of clarity and I don't actually know if what they are talking about is a software off or a physical off.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @11:23PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 26 2019, @11:23PM (#820398)

    No, it really isn't marketing-ese. It is very clear they are referring to a hardware switch if you read it.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:34AM (2 children)

      by hemocyanin (186) on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:34AM (#820495) Journal

      No -- look at the second option: " Group sensors with one or more existing kill switches"

      You are saying that "lockdown mode" is entered setting three kill switches. IF that was the case, then why mention "lockdown mode" at all -- it would be totally redundant.

      If you follow the link, they have this paragraph:

      The Future of Lockdown Mode

      There is a lot of potential to extend Lockdown Mode past just disabling hardware into software, and we are exploring some of those options now. For instance, the OS could detect when Lockdown Mode is enabled and automatically lock your screen. Those who are under even greater threats could potentially have Lockdown Mode enable extra defenses inside the OS, disable certain services, or even shut down or wipe the phone (although I’d suggest you set up some kind of PIN prompt for that last one, in case you trigger all the switches by accident). There are a lot of possibilities for this new feature and I’m looking forward to seeing how our customers extend it on their own phones.

      ALL that stuff is based on software interpreting switch signals. So this leaves me to wonder what "lockdown mode" really is because nowhere in the article do they say it is a hardware break in the circuit, nor do they come out and say it is using switches as software signals. The materials have that breathless marketingese that makes it really hard to understand what the fuck they are doing.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @03:15PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @03:15PM (#821348)

        So basically they have
        1) hardware kill switch for the cellular modem (which is on a seperate removable m2 card)
        2) hardware kill switch for wifi+bluetooth
        3) hardware kill switch for camera+microphone

        that leaves a whole bunch of sensors (GNSS, IMU, ambient light, proximity sensors, ...) that can also be used to gather privacy-sensitive data by malicious apps (which could then be send by the malicious app whenever you renable the network)

        the lockdown mode, is a software mode that deprives all those other sensors of power when all 3 hardware kill switches are off

        • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday March 28 2019, @04:09PM

          by hemocyanin (186) on Thursday March 28 2019, @04:09PM (#821377) Journal

          So in other words, it's just another method of telling the phone's software to please shut down $sensor and you have to trust the software to actually do it. That's the issue hardware switches are meant to cure and their full page "explanation" doesn't make that in any way clear. Their marketing materials sound so much like "but wait, there's more!!!!" as they go on to hide in glowing excessive verbiage the fact that it is doing what we don't want. That annoys me about Librem.