2. Someone malicious close to the customer, an angry ex, tampers with their device, and uses the lack of Secure Boot to modify the OS to hide all trace of a tracker's existence, or
3. A malicious piece of firmware uses the lack of Secure Boot to modify the boot partition to ensure the malware loads before the OS, thereby permanently disabling all ability for the system to repair itself from within itself
Apple uses #2 and #3 in their own arguments. If your Mac gets hacked, that's bad. If your iPhone gets hacked, that's your life, and your precise location, at all times.
As an embedded programmer in my former life, the number of customers that had the capability of running their own firmware, let alone the number that actually would, rapidly approaches zero. Like it or not, what customers bought was an appliance, not a general purpose computer.
(Even if, in some cases, it as just a custom-built SBC running BusyBox, customers still aren't going to go digging through a custom network stack).
The customers don't have to install the firmware themselves, they can have a friend do it or pay a repair shop. You know, just like they can with non-computerized tools that they don't fully understand.
I’m not talking about your buddy’s Android phone, the context was embedded systems with firmware you’re not going to find on xda developers. A “friend” isn’t going to know jack shit about installing firmware on an industrial control.
The argument is that P(customer wants to run their own firmware) cancels out and 2,3 are just the raw probability of you on the receiving end of an evil maid attack. If you think this is a high probability, a locked bootloader won’t save you.
Very neat, but 1) is not really P(customer wants to run their own firmware), but P(customer wants to run their own firmware on their own device).
So, the first term in 1) and 2) are NOT the same, and it is quite conceivable that the probability of 2) is indeed higher than the one in 1) (which your pseudo-statistical argument aimed to refute, unsuccessfully).
As if the monetary gain of 2 and 3 never entered the picture. Malicious actors want 2 and 3 to make money off you! No one can make reasonable amounts of money off 1.
I encourage you to re-evaluate this. How many devices do you (or have you) own which have have a microcontroller? (This includes all your appliances, your clocks, and many things you own which use electricity.) How many of these have you reflashed with custom firmware?
Imagine any of your friends, family, or colleagues. (Including some non-programmers/hackers/embedded-engineers) What would their answers be?
On Android, according to the Coalition Against Stalkerware, there are over 1 million victims of deliberately placed spyware on an unlocked device by a malicious user close to the victim every year.
#2 is WAY more likely than #1. And that's on Android which still has some protections even with a sideloaded APK (deeply nested, but still detectable if you look at the right settings panels).
As for #3; the point is that it's a virus. You start with a webkit bug, you get into kernel from there (sometimes happens); but this time, instead of a software update fixing it, your device is owned forever. Literally cannot be trusted again without a full DFU wipe.
And where are the stats for people running their own firmware and are not running stalkerware for comparison? You don’t need firmware access to install malware on Android, so how many of stalkerware victims actually would have been saved by a locked bootloader?
The entirety of GrapheneOS is about 200K downloads per update. Malicious use therefore is roughly 5-1.
> You don’t need firmware access to install malware on Android, so how many of stalkerware victims actually would have been saved by a locked bootloader?
With a locked bootloader, the underlying OS is intact, meaning that the privileges of the spyware (if you look in the right settings panel) can easily be detected, revoked, and removed. If the OS could be tampered with, you bet your wallet the spyware would immediately patch the settings system, and the OS as a whole, to hide all traces.
Assuming that we accept your premise that the most popular custom firmware for Android is stalkerware (I don’t). This is of course, a firmware level malware, which of course acts as a rootkit and is fully undetectable. How did the coalition against stalkerware, pray tell, manage to detect such an undetectable firmware level rootkit on over 1 million Android devices?
> The entirety of GrapheneOS is about 200K downloads per update. Malicious use therefore is roughly 5-1.
Can you stop this bad faith bullshit please? "Stalkerware" is an app, not an alternate operating system, according to your own source. You're comparing the number of malicious app installs to the number of installs of a single 3rd party Android OS which is rather niche to begin with.
You don't need to install an alternate operating system to stalk someone. And in fact that's nearly impossible to do without the owner noticing because the act of unlocking the bootloader has always wiped the device.
> The Coalition Against Stalkerware defines stalkerware as software, made available directly to individuals, that enables a remote user to monitor the activities on another user’s device without that user’s consent and without explicit, persistent notification to that user in a manner that may facilitate intimate partner surveillance, harassment, abuse, stalking, and/or violence. Note: we do not consider the device user has given consent when apps merely require physical access to the device, unlocking the device, or logging in with the username and password in order to install the app.
> Some people refer to stalkerware as ‘spouseware’ or ‘creepware’, while the term stalkerware is also sometimes used colloquially to refer to any app or program that does or is perceived to invade one’s privacy; we believe a clear and narrow definition is important given stalkerware’s use in situations of intimate partner abuse. We also note that legitimate apps and other kinds of technology can and often do play a role in such situations.
This assumes a high level of technical skill and effort on the part of the stalkerware author, and ignores the unlocked bootloader scare screen most devices display.
If someone brought me a device they suspected was compromised and it had an unlocked bootloader and they didn't know what an unlocked bootloader, custom ROM, or root was, I'd assume a high probability the OS is malicious.
> And that's on Android which still has some protections even with a sideloaded APK (deeply nested, but still detectable if you look at the right settings panels).
Exactly, secure boot advocates once again completely miss that it doesn't protect against any real threat models.
> 2. Someone malicious close to the customer, an angry ex, tampers with their device, and uses the lack of Secure Boot to modify the OS to hide all trace of a tracker's existence, or
Lol security people are out of their mind if they think that's actually a relevant concern.
> 3. A malicious piece of firmware uses the lack of Secure Boot to modify the boot partition to ensure the malware loads before the OS, thereby permanently disabling all ability for the system to repair itself from within itself
Oh no so now the malware can only permanently encrypt all the users files and permanently leak their secrets. But hey at least the user can repair the operating system instead of having to reinstall it. And in practice they can't even be sure about that because computers are simply too complex.
Yes. They're making the point that your flashing yellow warning is a good thing, and that it's helpful to the customer that a mechanism is in place to prevent it from being disabled by an attacker.
1. A customer wants to run their own firmware, or
2. Someone malicious close to the customer, an angry ex, tampers with their device, and uses the lack of Secure Boot to modify the OS to hide all trace of a tracker's existence, or
3. A malicious piece of firmware uses the lack of Secure Boot to modify the boot partition to ensure the malware loads before the OS, thereby permanently disabling all ability for the system to repair itself from within itself
Apple uses #2 and #3 in their own arguments. If your Mac gets hacked, that's bad. If your iPhone gets hacked, that's your life, and your precise location, at all times.