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Comment by bitwize | Hacker News Reader

Things like this are why "signed, approved boot chain from power on to end user application" for all digital devices is currently in the "yes, it's happening, and here's why it's a good thing" phase.

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Back in the earlier days of Android phones, it was fun to burn custom ROMs to try community-developed interfaces. This community was always upset when phone manufacturer's made it more and more difficult to do this. However, I think I'm understanding that this "signed, approved boot chain from power on to end user application" for all digital devices" is necessary for security purposes and would hopefully make it impossible to burn a custom ROM onto a phone.

You can satisfy both if there's a physical connection on a chip somewhere that you have to manually cut to disable the secure boot option - that leaves clear physical evidence that you did it, and would satisfy the free software types.

...No, that would satisfy the "We don't want to support these people" crowd. Full end user control over the secure boot chain, or GTFO.

Nothing less is acceptable. Corporates will never do it however, because they're up to their elbows in "deliberately not implemented".

“Real” Cisco phones like those behind President Zelenskyy on magazine covers take .cop.sgn files, and can deal with SSL-VPN, encrypted media and/or signaling, IPv6, device certificates, etc. those features with a guard on duty usually suffices. It’s available if you need it and are willing to pay for, and freemium version is just coming later.

(They’re EOL too and on eBay dirt cheap. I don’t know if my calls are actually encrypted but it can be fun to burn a weekend trying to register it to FreePBX)

Cisco phones are rough even with CUCM as the central server. They freeze randomly when connected to CUCM, to the point that its a pastime to walk into an office and look at the time and date shown onscreen on all the frozen Cisco phones.

Note that this freezing issue primarily affects phones made in the last decade from Cisco.

CUCM was originally developed by Selsius and never really felt like a "Cisco-quality" product.

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