On: Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation

[paulryanrogers]

How big a concern is this if the data is encrypted by the kernel or user space?

[Veserv → paulryanrogers]

Encryption does not help in this case. They have complete remote control over the entire CPU so they can just run the decryption code directly.

Encryption only helps if the endpoints that can get access to the plaintext are not compromised.

[ignoramous → paulryanrogers]

There are atleast 2 more exception levels with higher privileges than the Kernel on arm64.