The newspaper Izvestia published an article titled "The all-seeing around: any phone released already with espionage function". The article states that the Russian engineers have proved that all ARM processors have the opportunity to secretly spy on the user.
In this article we are frightened by the fact that the code running in the Trust Zone mode, "has unlimited access to all of the Processor Interface and means to all device functions, "and that can" connect to any such device in the world by changing the settings in a secret area. Moreover, the main operating system, which is located in the visible area, not even aware that such a connection there. "
They write that the experiments were carried out to launch in the Trust Zone programs that can "capture and transmit to the designated address all key on the onscreen keyboard. As a result, researchers have successfully transferred: password numbers and messages, as well as the entered credit card numbers and passwords to access the personal payment offices "," record and transfer audio files "to start the program when the phone is in sleep mode.
All this sounds dangerously, but if you think about a lot of questions.
First of all, where the smartphone will undertake firmware using these features. It hinted that it is already there, but no it is not yet discovered.
Secondly smartphones are all different, and even if you write code that bypass the operating system receives data from the microphone and touch screen, store them on drive, and then transmitted over the network, it is unlikely it will work on any other smartphone models, except the one for which it was written, because the hardware is in all different.
I have very serious doubts that with a single firmware, embedded in the processor, you can spy on the user. And what do you think?
© 2019 Alex Nadozhin
The main theme of my blog - Equipment for human life. I write reviews, share experiences, talk about all sorts of interesting things. My second project - lamptest.ru. I test LED lamps and help figure out which ones are good and which are not.