[scbzzzzz]

What do OnePlus gain from this? Can someone explain me what are the advantages of OnePlus doing all this? A failed update resulting in motherboard replacement? More money, more shareholders are happy?

I still sometimes ponder if oneplus green line fiasco is a failed hardware fuse type thing that got accidentally triggered during software update. (Insert I can't prove meme here).

[TomatoCo]

My understanding is there was a bug that let you wipe and re-enable a phone that had been disabled due to theft. This prevents a downgrade attack. It's in OnePlus's interest to make their phones less appealing for theft, or, in their interest to comply with requirements to be disableable from carriers, Google, etc.

[Zigurd]

Carriers can check a registry of stolen phone IMEIs and block them from their networks.

[segmondy]

right, but the stolen phones get sold in other countries where the carriers don't care if the phone was stolen but care that someone is spending money on their service.

[rvba]

And we cant own our phones due to that?

[reaperducer]

There is a surprising number of carriers in the world that don't care if you're using a stolen phone.

Not surprisingly, stolen phones tend to end up in those locations.

[gsich]

I have never seen this happen.

I have however experienced that a ISP will write to you because you have a faulty modem (some Huawei device) and asks you to not use it anymore.

[TehCorwiz]

Visit eBay and search for "blocked IMEI" or variants. There are plenty of used phones which are IMEI locked due to either: reported lost, reported stolen, failed to make payments, etc.

[gsich]

All offers seem to be from the US.

[ddtaylor]

I the lines between IMEI banning or blacklisting and the modern unlocking techniques they use have been blurred a little bit and so some carriers and some manufacturers don't really want to do or spend time doing the IMEI stuff and would prefer to just handle it all via their own unlocking and locking mechanisms.

[okanat]

With vulnerable FW, you can change IMEIs. Hence this kind of rollback prevention updates.

[scbzzzzz]

Make perfect sense, Thanks kind stranger. Hope it is the reason and not some corporate greed. It on me, lately my thoughts are defaulted towards corporates sabotaging consumers. I need to work on it.

The effects on custom os community is causing me worried ( I am still rocking my oneplus 7t with crdroid and oneplus used to most geek friendly) Now I am wondering if there are other ways they could achieved the same without blowing a fuse or be more transparent about this.

[zozbot234]

I don't think so. Blowing a fuse is just how the "no downgrades" policy for firmware is implemented. No different for other vendors actually, though the software usually warns you prior to installing an update that can't be manually rolled back.

[chasil]

Are you quite certain?

Google pushed a non-downgradable final update to the Pixel 6a.

I was able to install Graphene on such a device. Lineage was advertised and completely incompatible, but some hinted it would work.

[itsdesmond]

> It on me, lately my thoughts are defaulted towards corporates sabotaging consumers. I need to work on it.

You absolutely do not, this is an extremely healthy starting position for evaluating a corporations behavior. Any benefit you receive is incidental, if they made more money by worsening your experience they would.

[cess11]

As I understand it, this is a similar thing on Samsung handhelds:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Knox

[HiPhish]

> It's in OnePlus's interest to make their phones less appealing for theft,

I don't believe for a second that this benefits phone owners in any way. A thief is not going to sit there and do research on your phone model before he steals it. He's going to steal whatever he can and then figure out what to do with it.

[TomatoCo]

Which is why I mentioned that carriers or Google might have that as a requirement for partnering with them. iPhones are rarely stolen these days because there's no resale market for them (to the detriment of third party repairs). It behooves large market players, like Google or carriers, to create the same perception for Android phones.

Thieves don't do that research to specific models. Manufacturers don't like it if their competitors' models are easy to hawk on grey markets because that means their phones get stolen, too.

[lxgr]

It actually seems to work pretty well for iPhones.

Thieves these days seem to really be struggling to even use them for parts, since these are also largely Apple DRMed, and are often resorting to threatening the previous owner to remove the activation lock remotely.

Of course theft often isn't preceded by a diligent cost-benefit analysis, but once there's a critical mass of unusable – even for parts – stolen phones, I believe it can make a difference.

[lotu]

Yes thieves do, research on which phones to steal. Just not online more in personal talking with their network of lawbreakers. In short a thief is going to have a fence, and that person is going to know all about what phones can and cannot be resold.

[wnevets]

> My understanding is there was a bug that let you wipe and re-enable a phone that had been disabled due to theft. This prevents a downgrade attack.

This makes sense and much less dystopia than some of the other commenters are suggesting.

[userbinator]

That's even more dystopian.

[jeroenhd]

Their low-level bootloader code contains a vulnerability that allows an attacker with physical access to boot an OS of their choice.

Android's normal bootloader unlock procedure allows for doing so, but ensures that the data partition (or the encryption keys therefore) are wiped so that a border guard at the airport can't just Cellebrite the phone open.

Without downgrade protection, the low-level recovery protocol built into Qualcomm chips would permit the attacker to load an old, vulnerable version of the software, which has been properly signed and everything, and still exploit it. By preventing downgrades through eFuses, this avenue of attack can be prevented.

This does not actually prevent running custom ROMs, necessarily. This does prevent older custom ROMs. Custom ROMs developed with the new bootloader/firmware/etc should still boot fine.

This is why the linked article states:

> The community recommendation is that users who have updated should not flash any custom ROM until developers explicitly announce support for fused devices with the new firmware base.

Once ROM developers update their ROMs, the custom ROM situation should be fine again.

[g947o]

That makes sense, but how would an attacker flash an older version of the firmware in the first place? Don't you need developer options and unlocking + debugging enabled?

[jeroenhd]

Qualcomm phones come with a special mode (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm_EDL_mode) that allows devices to get unbricked even after you break the normal user-updatable "bootloader" on flash completely.

This feature doesn't allow unlocking the bootloader (as in, execute a custom ROM), it's designed to install factory-signed code. However, using it to "restore" an old, vulnerable factory code would obviously cause issues.

[QuiEgo]

Open the case and pogo pin on a flash programmer directly to the pins of the flash chip.

Sophisticated actors (think state-level actors like a border agent who insists on taking your phone to a back room for "inspection" while you wait at customs) can and will develop specialized tooling to help them do this very quickly.

[Snoozus]

thank you for this, I have a follow up question: Now an attacker can not install an old, vulnerable version. But couldn't they just install a new, vulnerable version? Is there something that enforces encryption key deletion in one case and not the other?

[jeroenhd]

AFAIK the signature mechanism hasn't been defeated, so the attacker can only load software signed by the factory keys.

Which includes old, vulnerable versions and all patched, newer versions. By burning in the minimum version, the old code now refuses to boot before it can be exploited.

This is standard practice for low-level bootloader attacks against things like consoles and some other phone brands.

[drnick1]

> What do OnePlus gain from this? Can someone explain me what are the advantages of OnePlus doing all this?

They don't want the hardware to be under your control. In the mind of tech executives, selling hardware does not make enough money, the user must stay captive to the stock OS where "software as a service" can be sold, and data about the user can be extracted.

[jeroenhd]

A bit overdramatic, isn't it? Custom ROMs designed for the new firmware revisions still work fine. Only older ROMs with potentially vulnerable bootloader code cause bricking risks.

Give ROM developers a few weeks and you can boot your favourite custom ROMs again.

[ddtaylor]

Not really dramatic IMO. Basically mirrors everything we have seen in other industries like gaming consoles, etc. that have destroyed ownership over time in favor of "service models" instead.

[wolvoleo]

And now governments are starting to take advantage of that loss of control by demanding surveillance tech like chatcontrol and other backdoors.

[zb3]

Note that Google also forces this indirectly via their "certification" - if the device doesn't have unremovable AVB (requires qualcomm secure boot fuse to be blown) then it's not even allowed to say the device runs Android.. if you see "Android™" then it means secure boot is set up and you don't have the keys, you can't set up your own, so you don't really own the SoC you paid for..

[subscribed]

I don't think it's accurate.

Specifically GrapheneOS on Pixels signs their releases with their own keys. And with the rollback protection without blowing out any fuses.

[zb3]

I was talking about different keys and different fuses. I know about "avb_custom_key" (provisioned by GrapheneOS), but all this AVB is handled by abl/trustzone and I can't modify those because those need to be signed with keys that I don't own.

I know that all these restrictions might make sense for the average user who wants a secure phone.. but I want an insecure-but-fully-hackable one.

[palata]

> In the mind of tech executives

To be fair, they are right: the vast majority of users don't give a damn. Unfortunately I do.

[ddtaylor]

Sure if you want to compete against Google or Samsung. Maybe that is the plan that one plus has. My understanding was that they were going after a different Market of phone users that might want a little bit more otherwise why not just go with one of the other people that will screw you just as hard for less.

[rvnx]

It is the same concept on an iPhone, you have 7 days to downgrade, then it is permanently impossible. Not for technical reasons, but because of an arbitrary lock (achieved through signature).

OnePlus just chose the hardware way, versus Apple the signature way

Whether for OnePlus or Apple, there should definitively be a way to let users sign and run the operating system of their choice, like any other software.

(still hating this iOS 26, and the fact that even after losing all my data and downgrading back iOS 18 it refused to re-sync my Apple Watch until iOS 26 was installed again, shitty company policy)

[Muromec]

> Not for technical reasons, but because of an arbitrary lock (achieved through signature).

There is a good reason to prevent downgrades -- older versions have CVEs and some are actually exploitable.

[rvnx]

and ? this should prevent you from deciding the level of risk or even installing forks of that OS (that can also write fixes, even without source-code by patching binaries) ?