Apparently just turning your phone on in the airport can get you pwned, but you have to admire the tone-deafness to irony in this statement here:
The U.S. State Department has told Americans coming to Sochi that they should have “no expectation of privacy,” even in their hotel rooms.Why, Mr. Kerry? Is the NSA there, too? Are all the hotel rooms in Sochi within the DHS's 100-mile "border search exception zone"?
Who's gonna probulate the American travelers headed for the Olympics worse? The Russian mob, the FSB, or the TSA? At least the hackers are only going to touch people's junk metaphorically.
I watched a video of a reporter whose smart phone got pwned seconds after connecting to a local network.
ReplyDeleteI think if I had to go I'd get my hands on an old fashioned non-smart cell phone and maybe carry a laptop booting from a linux live-dvd for internet connectivity. Or maybe a netbook booting from linux on a usb flash drive with a physical RW/RO switch.
Or what the heck, embrace it. Get a throwaway machine and create new throwaway email accounts that auto-forward to and from your regular account that you can forget about after you get back.
Or am I thinking about this too much? I'm sitting at home with a fever this morning. Before she left my wife assured me that I have a special kind of fever that would result in bruises on my head if I tried to leave the house. Something about dope slaps and stubborn people who insist they're fine when they're sick.
But it's OK when WE do it.
ReplyDeleteAnd we have always been at war with Eastasia!
BryanP: Buy a generic laptop with Windoze on it, and boot from a linux thumbdrive with an encrypted storage partition for /home/username. Never boot it into windoze. Use webmail if you must stay connected.
Buy a dumbass cellphone, with no capabilities whatsoever locally. Throw it in the trashcan at the airport when you return home.
[beyow beyow beyow]
ReplyDeleteIt's the Daily Double!
This is news?
ReplyDeleteSeriously, it's been several years since large tech company I know of operating in china would give exec's phones and a fresh computer when they went there., and when they got back EVERY SINGLE ONE was compromised multiple ways.
That IT dept wasn't even sure the hardware hadn't been compromised, and I recall hearing they handed them over to the US govt spooks after they were done checking 'em.
Checking them off site, in a faraday cage.
It's not paranoia when they are out to get you.