Open Phones

[Georgi Guninski]

On Sat, Jul 23, 2016 at 04:28:18AM -0400, grarpamp wrote:
> New model closed source iPhones go for $700+.
> I'd happily pay $1k+ for an open phone if it used an open
> community designed baseband chip, ran a real unix, and
> was hopefully modular repairable / upgradeable even if
> bulkier version... the hackerspace of phones.
>
Well, Tor appears to me partial counterexample to "the theory of many
eyes".

Even if the chip is community designed, do you really know what "the
community is?". Who audited it?

Also, the implementation must be exactly what is designed.

Can't find reference ATM, but pretty sure I read that faulty NAND gates
can compromise a lot of things (crypto too), while the metal appears to 
work as designed.

How do you verify a chip is what is claimed to be? Maybe peel it, take
snapshots and then reverse engineer the wiring/gates and compare to the
source (VHDL?) ?

As for phones, I don't keep anything of importance on them and consider
them compromised. Might not work for you.