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Comment by dutchbrit | Hacker News Reader

So, how do they plan on activating cameras/microphones? Backdoor?

Have you heard of hacking? Most police forces have offensive hacking teams by now, it's not much of a secret. Also there are some quite famous tools that aid in this.

The camera and microphone of a modern smartphone are not trivial to hack. I highly doubt a local government would have the resources to even consider having such teams.

There's a Dutch TV show that regularly catches African fraudsters by literally using their camera's to take pictures of the fraudsters. Sure, they trick them into installing an app, but that's something LE can do as well.

Also, there are tools like Pegasus that pretty much do all the heavy lifting in hacking.

Do they? I can't really imagine anything like that. I would be inclined to believe that they purchase ready-made tools from Israeli/US companies. But hacker teams?

Back to 15$ Nokias I guess

Which come with microphones too.

Is S30+ or KaiOS (previously FirefoxOS) which Nokia uses really that much more secure?

Also, usability becomes a thing here. Most people don't even use their phone for calls anymore. Not being able to do the other stuff defeats the purpose.

But no apps or dodgy email links you can hack them with, perhaps? No idea

The most basic phones don't have KaiOS.

There are / have been hacks using SMS that didn't even require the user to do anything, but then again they required Android iOS to carry out the hack.

The smaller the attack surface the better (for the criminal).

> Also, usability becomes a thing here. Most people don't even use their phone for calls anymore. Not being able to do the other stuff defeats the purpose.

Afaik criminals that were using these special phone systems like SkyECC just wanted to make calls and send messages, they'll use something else for TikTok or whatever.

EDIT: SkyECC didn't have microphone enabled, it was just able to send messages

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

Even SIM cards have been hacked remotely:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/01/sim-card-...

So, "simple is safe" is just not really a thing. SafER perhaps, but also so much less useful that it defeats the purpose of using one IMO.

I think it would be better to use a secure android ROM. Like GrapheneOS or CalyxOS.

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