M. K. Shen -- Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu.
That a modern smartphone with Internet access and a multitude of nice
features is liable of being hacked similar to a PC is evident. On the
other hand, a non-smart mobile phone, of design of the earlier
generation, unintelligent, clumsy, no Internet access, though yet
purchasable for telephone and SMS purposes only, could IMHO easily
mislead one to think that the device may be sufficiently secure against
malicious manipulations. The fact is however that, if an adversary is
capable enough to enter the cellular network, he could access the SIM
card to perform his malicious work. A recent personal experience of mine
is the following: I bought such a device and a pre-paid SIM card,
entered the telephone numbers of my friends into its contact address
list and informed my friends of my new mobile phone number. Soon, though
at a rather low frequency averaging roughly one event per day, a number
of my friends complained that I had called them but strangely never
attempted to say even a single word. It turned out that the device each
time arbitrarily selected an entry in the contact address list and
called automatically, which could also be verified by its list of all
outgoing calls. As remedy I deleted all telephone numbers of my friends
in it, leaving however for experimental purpose my own home telephone
number. One following night I had then the uncommon experience of being
awoken by a call from my own mobile phone!
