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by SheinhardtWigCo 1790 days ago
Reach out to Amnesty Tech and/or Citizen Lab for help establishing whether this is a real infection or a false positive.

If it's real: Adjust your behavior to account for the fact that once you know you're a target, there is no device on the market and no practical measures you can use to maintain safety. Assume everything you do on or near a computer used by you or a close contact is being monitored. The level of effort needed to maintain strong security in the context of being a target is astronomically higher than any individual can deal with.

2 comments

The safest device would be a classical PC for general computing. No smartphone OS of course. Still vulnerable, but probably a lot safer.
> classical PC for general computing. No smartphone OS

Pinephone and Librem 5 smartphones can run a desktop OS for general computing. So smartphones should still be possible.

How about use your phone as only a data modem and do everything on a chrome os device, which have no known malware. Just don't install chrome extensions and you are safe. Also avoid installing apps on your phone

This is basically what I wish I had, except back in reality there's no Chrome device that's the size of my cell phone. There are some with cellular modems.

> on a chrome os device

You instantly lost.

Chrome OS is probably the most secure system to use from an exploit perspective.

Just never install an Android app on it (that feature doesn't have the same guarantees as the rest of the system), and preferably use a guest account on it (that's how they run it in security competitions)

You basically have to break four layers to exploit that. You have to break the web renderer, then out of the browser sandbox, then you need to exploit the kernel to be able to write outside the (non persistent) guest account storage, then you need to exploit the firmware/secure boot chain so secure boot doesn't detect your modifications to the filesystem when the system next boots.

Chrome OS is probably the OS that leaks the most personal info and behavior of all OS combined. It is inexcusable to subject children to it in my opinion. Advertisers know how to groom.
No malware except for the google operating system
And no spyware besides your documents being in Google's storage.
Store your files in local files, running on their Linux "crostini". Apple and android have hundreds, probably thousands of documented attacks, plus known companies attacking them with rats and various spyware. There's an article a day. Apple took apps off their app store to satisfy the Chinese govt and hurt Hong Kong democratic resistance. Google has paid hackers for various attempts to break into chrome os, most of them were really chrome attacks but the signed os images have generally brought safety. Linux even has many known su root attacks plus malware and supply chain attacks.

You are just foolish not to consider chrome os.