Hacker News

an hour ago by belter

I have seen some manuals were released and some tools reverse engineered. What is currently the best link for a deep technical overview of how these tools work/worked?

2 hours ago by canistel

Ironically, users themselves are disallowed from rooting their phones.

Right to root, is right to repair.

an hour ago by duxup

I'm all for having the right to repair.

I'm not convinced any of the folks involved ability to root would prevent the situation described.

an hour ago by js8

If you could safely (on the hardware level) replace image of the phone with another, it would be easy to guarantee that you can get a rootkit-free phone - all you need is a trusted image.

44 minutes ago by dewey

> it would be easy to guarantee that you can get a rootkit-free phone

The problem in this case is that you get the malware installed through a no-click required iMessage and not a "supply chain" attack on the image your phone is running on. How would that help?

an hour ago by johannes1234321

Once the system is compromised the best repair is a full reset (and even better swapping the device, not that the restore image has been tampered with ...) root powers are needed for analysis. But that's nothing a normal user can do ...

But on the larger point: I agree there should be an option for suers to replace firmware and become root. But limiting root access makes work for Pegasus and others harder, which is good.

an hour ago by nix23

>users themselves are disallowed from rooting their phones

What? how's that possible?

an hour ago by dathinab

In practice, not by law.

Or at least often not by law, there are some stupid laws around WiFi/broadband etc. which can be interpreted to state that it's not allowed for a phone to be sold which can be rooted (without a hack) as the user could use it to setup a WiFi hot-spot which uses non-legal frequencies. This law was made because supposedly that (with routers) is a problem, except it isn't as far as I know and it as pure lobby work from a certain industry which also loves the user to be forced to use their routers.

(PS: Also country dependent.)

an hour ago by DSingularity

Well, I thought it was only terrorists that were targeted?

an hour ago by benque

One man's journalist is another man's .... ;-)

an hour ago by stavros

And the same invariable lie is always used, "oh, don't worry, we're only going to use this against the bad guys". Bad guys only exist in a world without nuance.

an hour ago by stavros

Terrorists, journalists, only a few letters are different.

an hour ago by dathinab

Yes, just a word edit distance of 13 (6del, 7adds).

It's the same distance as changing <Freedom> to <Dictator> ;=)

EDIT: Yes I miscalculated, I overlooked the r.

an hour ago by stavros

Such trivialities do not matter in a TRULY FREE country, and please look over here, not over there.

6 minutes ago by Hamuko

A lot of the current world news strike fear into its readers. Surely that is some kind of terrorism.

an hour ago by undefined

[deleted]

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