News from the embedded world


(And no, you can't trust Linux, or any other OS, you can't even trust the processor it runs on.)
If you dont want to trust the CPU, then just stay away of anything computing related...
Mk3fuBr.jpg
 
that stick keeps track of all the animals you hunted with it and your fingerprints could be used tracing it back to you O.O

don't trust stick
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I independently contacted allwinner and presented myself as a potential buyer/manufacturer/OEM, a tactic that has worked very well for me in the past to get really hard to acquire pieces of technology. This is the response that was given, to me it looks like it is falling into the same realm as the intel dev boards. If ED hasn't heard back from them I'd image this is their stance.

Hello, Thanks for your interest in A80 OptimusBoard. Presently the board is just for internal development and we don't have plan to sell it till now.
That is not really unexpected.
If we consider that TI

* did announce the OMAP5 in Feb 2011

* did demo the first OMAP5 based devices on CES in Jan 2012

* announced to reduce activities for the mobile market in Sept 2012 (after they lost their OMAP lead customer Nokia in 2012)

* and made the EVM (version 2.0) available to the public in May 2013

we can estimate how much effort it takes from announcing a chip (project) to show first working samples and to make an EVM available to the public.

From that we can estimate when the A80 OptimusBoard is generally available to the public (after we did firstly hear about the A80 in Sept 2013 and a first OptimusBoard was shown in Jan 2014). Even if you assume Allwinner is working twice as fast as TI (well, to be that much faster they likely sacrifice quality and optimizations) it will be not before end of this year.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You can't use TI's announcements as a benchmark for SoC release promptness.. Allwinner has a history of having products available pretty shortly after they announced them. That doesn't mean they're sacrificing the development cycle, although there's no question that their SoCs take less development time since they use CPU and GPU hard macros and open cores for auxiliary functionality. But it could also be that they just don't announce things until they're closer to ready.

When they say that devices will be out in a few months I don't think they're just plain lying about status, and there's no way they could be that close but that wrong on projections. More like the "internal development" expands to some key strategic partners.
 
I am not just satisfied... I am amazed. ED knows how to do amazing consoles.

ED knows how to make a idea out of the /dev/urandom poured onto the forums.

Also, i see more power in MIPS than x86.

I know that x86 may be a good thing, because it allows running windows...

But i am concerned about a platform which is older than 20 (!!!) years, and always starts up in real mode which allows 1mb of ram, and native 16-bit instructions.

I declare x86 to be the "Longest IT necrophilia act of the century".

From another side, its just my opinion, and i don't ask you to put MIPS instead of x86 in the future.

Due to the fact that x86 is alive just because "it got friends of around the same age", MIPS, which supports no x86 code, would have no advantage we are running for here.

As well as that exactly this fact keeps MIPS from having really powerful CPUs, and are mainly only good for SC, who don't need x86 legacy, and need to be more powerful than ARM.

I love the idea of the changeable CPU modules. Never thought of doing the same for the communications? As there is a thread of rage and hate over it.
 
Never thought of doing the same for the communications? As there is a thread of rage and hate over it.

That thread came from this one, the argument was pulled out to keep this one clean. well cleaner...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
(And no, you can't trust Linux, or any other OS, you can't even trust the processor it runs on.)
Well and what do you say against the argument that if you don't trust the OS and everything below (i.e. processor) you have lost anyway?
If it can't phone home, it does not matter if there is a back door.

To have a secure system, the system can not have any external connections. usually this is called an "air gap". Not practical for most people, but that is the only way, and even then not secure against a determined spy. The RF radiation from your monitor can be picked up and the image reconstructed remotely, the sound of you typing can be recorded, and what you type can be reconstructed. even power usage fluctuations can be used to infer what you are doing.

https://www.fas.org/irp/program/security/tempest.htm

But just because it is relatively easy to pick a lock, it doesn't mean you shouldn't bother to lock the door.
 
If it can't phone home, it does not matter if there is a back door.
It'll have wifi and if you get a 3G modem you'll use it eventually. Sooner or later it's going to be able to phone home with all the data it's been collecting on you: passwords, search habits, locations, all for the picking. In short: if you're compromised you are fucked.
But just because it is relatively easy to pick a lock, it doesn't mean you shouldn't bother to lock the door.
The question isn't whether we should "lock the door", it is how many locks is enough. Is it enough that there be one good lock on the door? Some people will use it, some people won't. Should there be a giant physical lock that is really hard to open but automatically locks so that everyone has to unlock it every time? Should we put a dozen smaller locks, incurring the cost of each one even if most people will never use them?There is going to be a lock, the question people are debating is how strong that lock needs to be and whether there should be more of them.

Personally, I have enough trust in the system to believe Gemalto when they say their chips turn off when they're told to and don't turn back on until told again. That's not good enough for some and I respect that, they want something extra which cuts off the power to the module, whether it be software GPIO controlled or a hardware switch that needs to have the battery removed in order to access.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Why you avatar look like a exterminator with his head upside-down, drawn by a abstract artist?
I guess you missed out on one of the best shows of the late 80's and 90's.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
well we (I also being part of the government but not speaking on their behalf) improve the software we're using so it meets our needs, that also includes fixing tons and tons of security holes when found. Things that could be used by people (bad hackers) who would want to target mr common user and hurt them (non-fictionally) by selling their information or just outright steal your creditcards and identity. We got some of the world's best hackers (both good and bad turned good) working for us constantly crawling through code. If you only knew all the software that you may or may not even use every day that has been patched because of those people.... Windows, Java, Flash, iOS, android, linux (yes we use and patch linux as well)... once patched we submit those changes to the creator, them using those patches or not is up to them in most cases. http://www.disa.mil/ is a bunch of smart cookies and that's where the majority of this stuff comes from, NSA is fun to throw around because it's one of those "big brother" tin-foil hat scaremongering hotbutton words, but that's not where the real work is done.

The way I understand it, android having backdoors or not is not required for what is possible. Smart phone, dumb phone, aircard on a laptop, it doesn't matter. An active connection is an active connection. That's where the magic happens, for the radio hardware to work it needs permissions at certain levels, thats where an attack would come from and I don't believe there's a way around it. So if you're that paranoid, don't have a cell phone. Once the information leaves your phone you're fucked anyway. But being scared of security holes being patched in open source code and submitted for you see and review. Come on now...

But main reason we're in android is because we're trying to find alternatives to blackberry, of which we found and fixed security holes in as well.

Your spider sense is correct for what is possible, but the you're way off on the which direction it's coming from.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Why you avatar look like a exterminator with his head upside-down, drawn by a abstract artist?
I guess you missed out on one of the best shows of the late 80's and 90's.
I realize who is on you avatar, but it came to me only after a while.


At first it was looking like nothing else but a droid after being blown-up several times.

Why you avatar look like a exterminator with his head upside-down, drawn by a abstract artist?
I guess you missed out on one of the best shows of the late 80's and 90's.
Or perhaps he's just jealous that your robot avatar looks better than his robot avatar ;)


- Neelix
Sure? So sure? (No, i dont put this in the spoiler, so i waste everybody's traffic for the glory of the Satan!)

0Mnb7VI.jpg
 
Wouldn't it be relatively easy to find out which processes are using the UTMS module and kill them?
It should be, just "lsof | grep /dev/ttyWhateverTheModemIs"
But if you're already compromised then it's possible they've managed to replace lsof (or even libc) so that it doesn't show the malicious process. I'm pretty certain that that'll never happen though.
Which is why one shouldn't just run random binaries off of the web (regardless of the OS) without extreme caution, which should go without saying.

Would it also be a reasonable to assume that the vast majority of Linux-compatible malware/rootkits/etc are built for x86/x86_64 and not for ARM (which would actually require a separate builds, especially the ones that actually replace many system tools like ls, ps, kill, lsof, etc? Or is it possible that ARM based Pandora/Pyra systems could be susceptible to malware designed for Android, which is an ARM based Linux system?
 
Back
Top