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Comment by dist-epoch

2 months ago

Phones today show in the status bar if the camera/microphone is active.

If you can’t trust the software, why would you trust the software? Am I supposed to rely on the hope that an attacker can take over some part of the OS, but not the one rendering a tiny blob in the status bar?

  • Apple has moved these indicators into their “exclaves” removing any control or influence from the OS / software running.

  • I think Snowden worked with someone to create a bulky, apparatus that you could put your iphone into and it would measure if any signals at all were coming from it.

Does that mean the phone will not react to „Hey, Siri“ without a mic icon showing up in the status bar?

  • “Hey Siri” is activated by the mic, which is always listening, but only for the key phrase. It’s not going through the OS in the traditional sense, hence the “light” only comes on when it starts to listen through the OS.

And you think that wouldnt be disabled by malware that can turn your microphone on at will? Lmfao

  • That seems unlikely, the code to do that would be part of the OS or maybe even part of the hardware, not really trivial things to hack.

    Plus, what could a hacker really do with voice recordings that they couldn't do more easily with keylogging? It's not exactly common for people to say their credit card info or passwords aloud, much more common to type it