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0 pointsnarrator3y ago0 comments

Have a really small 4g hotspot hotglued to a tiny Linux computer running the Tails distribution read-only with a removable SD card with all your data and no executable code on it if you're a real cypherpunk.

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6 comments · 3 top-level

capableweb3y ago· 3 in thread

I'm guessing you're connecting to 4G with a sim card? Essentially a small computer, so you're exposed that way regardless.

narratorOP3y ago

The 4g is in the hotspot that you're connecting to via wifi from the mini-computer. That way you don't have baseband firmware exploits to deal with on the linux machine like you would now with a traditional android phone. 4G firmware are all binary blobs that probably have backdoors.

Hotspot. You assume the hotspot is compromised and only connect via WiFi

ransackdev3y ago

If the hotspot were compromised, why would you connect to it at all?

KMag3y ago

Why a hotspot instead of a USB 4g modem? Concerned about 4g hardware/driver vulns but not WiFi hardware/driver vulns?

Edit: yes, I guess you're concerned about sim-resident malware exploiting the modem, exploiting the rest of the machine via USB.

Also, if you're that paranoid, you should probably be running something seL4-based to better compartmentalize compromises.

predictabl33y ago

We really ought to push for something better than Tails. I'd love to run something like it on an aarch64-linux or riscv64-linux board. I'd love to run something that doesn't have a hacked, nearly broken debian boot process, which broke the ability to kexec it many versions ago, etc.

/me keeps (semi-)patiently waiting for SpectrumOS... https://spectrum-os.org/

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