
Google Confirms Android Camera Security Threat: ‘Hundreds of Millions’ Affected - heshiebee
https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/11/19/google-confirms-android-camera-security-threat-hundreds-of-millions-of-users-affected/
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zepto
How strange that this wasn’t discovered and revealed by Project Zero. How did
they miss this?

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captatus123
Also it doesn't seem to be getting as much press as you'd expect for something
this widespread :(

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deogeo
Of course hardware switches for the mic/camera/baseband are out of the
question...

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Someone
I would think ≫99% of users would forever keep it switched “on”, and of those,
many would think their phone broke down if they accidentally switched it
“off”.

⇒ yes, it is out of the question, even though _some_ fraction of users would
like to have it.

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TurkishPoptart
I've had the Pixel 1 for almost three years now. Solid phone. But I always
knew it had a manufacturer-installed backdoor. Does anyone know on the
progress on GNU/Linux, privacy-focused phones?

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chrisanthropic
In no particular order, here's the ones I've been following:

-[https://postmarketos.org/](https://postmarketos.org/)

-[https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/)

-[https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/](https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/)

I'm the most optimistic about Postmarket in the long run, but the others are
actual hardware so there's that.

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Youden
Since you say you've been following it, any idea what's going on with modems
on postmarketOS? Is there any chance of getting working calls/SMS/data working
on conventional phones or is that only likely to work on open source stuff
like PinePhone?

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scintill76
I think I've laid the foundation for supporting Qualcomm modems with ofono
(committed to the pmOS repos.) My device has a vendor kernel, and I helped
someone else with a mainline kernel. I haven't seen much movement other than
that, maybe due to lack of interest or skill in potential developers. (Each
device needs a few custom bits like firmware packaged.) Another problem might
be a lack of usable GUI to actually use the modem features, but I'm not up to
speed on recent progress.

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kd3
With all the news of vulnerabilities in Android recently, as well as the fact
that most Android phones come with spyware from the manufacturer preinstalled,
it is clear that Android is pure garbage. I hope Microsoft takes note and
decides to get back in the game with Windows mobile very soon.

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Trimbell
Microsoft doesn't exactly have the best track record with security or privacy
either...

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kd3
They are however miles ahead of Android and IOS. It's too bad that they are
now preloading the garbage that is Android on their own Surface mobile devices
now. Stopping with Windows Mobile is one of the biggest mistakes Nadella made.
It sure helped to make it seem like Microsoft earned more (by cutting costs)
but now they're forced to load garbage onto their devices and this will haunt
them in the future.

