[tinus_hn]

> no isolation between the baseband processor and the main system.

There’s barely any connection between the baseband processor and the application processor on a smartphone.

Notice for all your examples, it’s denial of service for the functions of the baseband processor by a bug in the code run by the baseband processor. It doesn’t get access to the data available to the application processor. Except for the oldschool feature phones, where there is no separate application processor so a bug in the software run by its processor can cause the phone to reboot or reveal the memory accessible by that processor.

[effie]

Barely any connection? Like if there is only a single wire, it's fine because the data exfiltration / os manipulation takes long? Oh please. These two processors are interconnected and most of phones run some unknown untrustworthy software on both of them.

Some attacks: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/replicant-developers-fin...

[tinus_hn]

Which has absolutely nothing to do with isolation. The two processors are not ‘interconnected’, they are separate and can only communicate through defined interfaces. That’s isolation. If there is a backdoor on one processor that grants access to the other the problem is that backdoor and not some nebulous interconnection.

If your computer runs a backdoor that grants access to anyone who can access it over the network, the problem that someone from China can now control your computer is not the fault of the Internet. It’s the fault of that program.

And also ‘most of phones’ in the article is ‘Android phones’ and then it’s watered down even more to ‘Samsung Galaxy phones’. ‘In most devices, for all we know, [...]’. No.

[effie]

Well they do not read directly each other's memory, but still the baseband processor is electrically connected and so can exfiltrate data from or manipulate the application processor. On the other hand, if you have two phones glued together, one for voice/sms, one for internet access via independent network without microphone, the first one cannot exfiltrate/manipulate the second one and the second one cannot record your voice. That is isolation.

[tinus_hn]

No, because there is a connection between both of these devices and all other devices on the phone network and the internet. It’s just bullshit and on top of that overcomplicated nonsense no one is going to use.

[effie]

I'm talking about physically isolated computers connected to separate networks, not connected to the same untrusted network. The meaning of the isolation is that while operator of each network has one class of data (voice/sms vs. the internet), neither has both of them.