pinephone_modem_sdk

> Their microphone kill switch also doesn't prevent audio recording. Unless you provide some evidence, I will consider this false accusation. > They aren't open hardware despite many attempts to mislead people with the marketing. Who and where said they were open hardware? > extremely outdated proprietary fork of Android Which was freed and can run new Linux kernels now: https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk and https://xnux.eu/devices/feature/modem-pp.html Your walls of text are disingenuous.

> until we free the proprietary baseband processors and their RTOS How about Pinephone with its partially freed baseband OS [0] or Librem 5 with its removable modem [1]? [0] https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5

You aren't allowed to control the software running on the baseband or SIM card, even with GrapheneOS on Pixel, or FLX1. With the PinePhone you can control the ARM processor within the baseband, but you can't control the Hexagon processor. https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk/

It doesn't have to be, the PinePhone's modem runs a proprietary Linux distro, which you can replace with an open source Linux distro. That is only the ARM processor of it though, the Hexagon one is all proprietary. https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk/

This [0] is the closest we have so far - almost entirely FLOSS, and it consumes ~1/4 (IIRC) the power of the stock firmware. It's also never going to be the default Pine64 ships with, because no OEM wants to tell the FCC "We asked the users nicely not to send erroneous signals. No, this was not lab-tested, nor verified by the FCC to not interfere with other devices." Considering the legal limitations, I think this is an absolutely amazing point to have gotten to. OP may have issues, but he mentioned even his Android handset had similar issues. I have a pretty good carrier (for a carrier), amd have pretty well no issues using my Pinephone Pro as my actual smartphone. I just carry a spare battery :) [0] https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk

Hey, that looks really cool. I've been wanting to mess around with this stuff on PinePhone, which is in a unique position here since there are third-party images for the baseband which are mostly open source[1]. I've been especially interested in trying to reverse engineer what's going on with Google Fi on Android, but it is definitely a bit over my head, given that until recently I didn't even really know what an AT command was :) I'm guessing since it's Google the carrier stuff is mostly for fallback and all of the actually interesting stuff is done using protobufs over a data connection. (Fi is also interesting because you can make phone calls on the web over WebRTC. I wonder if that's some kind of gateway to SIP, or what.) [1]: https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk (Note: I didn't dig deep enough, so it wouldn't surp

Ironically modules made by Quectel are GPL compliant (https://www.quectel.com/quectel-open-source) and you can build custom firmwares for them (https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk) to strip out any OTA logic. Fibocom, on the other hand, not so much.

> Any other related rererences - the tech that enables this sort of tracking? It's everywhere in mobile devices. It's better not to use them. If you must use one, you must at least have root to disable AGPS + add stringent iptable rules to disable any outgoing communication by default: you should only enable connections per app, or per IP/domain for what you need. Still, that'll be of a limited help since the baseband manages connections (3GPP profiles etc) and does the equivalent of NAT to your device. For all I know, the baseband could tell android "location disabled? sure thing!" while still getting GPS fixes + sending the position by UDP packets processed by the baseband OS: Android won't even see it! Yet by virtue of sharing the same IP (or being "enriched" with your IMSI as you can see above), you will be totally trackable. Doing an

> I'm sure young me would have found a ton of use cases for this, but now I'm old. Invert the problem: get one and try to hack to do whatever. That may help you regain some teen spirit :) It may be better if you found some ideas naturally (chasing a rabbit down its rabbit hole is fun, but chasing your own rabbit is even funnier) However, if you want ideas, here are some simple ones: - listen to your bluetooth devices like toothbrushes, scales, thermometers: try to decode and display what they send. There are many free software projects doing just that for Xiaomi devices - connect a 4G module and try to send SMS. Most 4G modules can be driven with just AT commands so it shouldn't be too hard. The Quectel EC25 is extensively documented thanks to being present in the PinePhone: https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk/blob...

There is FOSS boot firmware for the RPi: https://github.com/librerpi/lk-overlay/ The PinePhone modem is from Quectel, the ARM processor in the modem is by default a proprietary Linux distro, but you can replace it with an open source Linux distro. Unfortunately the Hexagon DSP in the modem runs a proprietary OS. https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk/ https://osmocom.org/projects/quectel-modems/

Not all basebands have that much control. For example in the PinePhone, the ARM processor in baseband runs a proprietary Linux distro, but folks have replaced that with a fully free Linux distro. Unfortunately the proprietary software running on the Hexagon DSP hasn't been replaced. I believe the interface between the two is fairly restricted though. https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk/ BTW, there are a number of videos at the CCC media archive about concrete vulnerabilities in baseband software: https://media.ccc.de/search/?q=baseband

You can install your own firmware on the Pinephone modem. https://github.com/Biktorgj/pinephone_modem_sdk

Thankfully, the Pinephone community has stepped up and made a FOSS firmware (mainly biktorgi, thank you!): https://github.com/Biktorgj/pinephone_modem_sdk/releases It still uses the ADSP from Quectel, but from my usage (and from other's reports), it is FAR more stable than the stock firmware. It is also immune to this vunerability (I don't even think it has atfwd_daemon).