Slashdot Mirror
Inside Boeing's New Self-Destructing Smartphone
mpicpp writes "It looks thicker than most of the phones you see at Best Buy, but Boeing's first smartphone isn't meant to be used by the average person. The company that's known for its airplanes is joining the smartphone game with the Boeing Black, targeted at people that work in the security and defense industry. One of its security features is self-destructing if it gets into the wrong hands, although not quite in the Mission Impossible sense. According to the company's letter to the FCC, the phone will have screws with a tamper-proof coating, revealing if a person has tried to disassemble it. 'Any attempt to disassemble the device would trigger functions that would delete the data and software contained within the device and make the device inoperable,' writes Bruce Olcott, an attorney for Boeing."
Starting price is $10,000...
Soon in an iPhone near you!
" . . . this phone message will destroy your phone in 15 seconds . . . "
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
So...take a dremel and cut the case around the screws.
... Will it run Angry Birds and Candy Crush? ... Will it run Crysis? ... Will it run Slashdot Beta?
You could just get a Nexus, fill it's insides with epoxy, install Cyanogenmod, use whole disk encryption and some sort of 'erase data after failed attempt to decrypt'.
Or just, youknow, not have anything on your phone worth stealing..
Oh, and you generally don't do a tamper 'proof' coating on screws, you do a 'tamper-evident' coating.
Want your own tamper evident coating? Buy a bottle of the cheapest, cheesiest glitter nail polish you can find. Coat the screws with a layer. Take a high resolution picture of each screw. Suspect tampering? compare the current coating with the picture.
As for deleting the data off the device, I'd probably simply encrypt everything on the device, with the key stored in a specific chip designed to dump said key if anything triggers it. No Key = No Data.
I don't read AC A human right
How would it go if it were chilled right down, liquid nitrogen or colder so the electronics stopped working and then disassembled. (I don't know if it's possible, just kicking the idea around.)
I see they're using the same battery technology they used in the Dreamliner then.
A hundred and twenty characters ought to be enough for anyone...
Use a mini saw to delicately remove the covering or the screen instead of the screw.
When I worked in the ATM industry we already had that feature built into the keypad (EPP). If you tried to extract the keys any number of ways (freeze spray, remove back cover, cut front cover, etc.) it would dump the memory and leave the attacker with nothing. All you have to do is contact one of the companies that built those EPP's and they can guide you into a LOW COST hardware method of dumping everything. You don't need to go with a fancy "custom coating" that might fail or have alternative issues. I would not buy this phone as it is over-priced, and I can do the same thing with a common android smartphone and a little software and hardware tweaking. Epoxy is your friend for keeping people out of things they don't need to see, as is encryption with delete upon failure to decrypt. What a joke, but they will sell a bunch of them to Gov. and "special" people.
Does it delete its own data when battery runs out?
They are basically claiming they have a HSM here. Now, HSMs are as expensive as they are for a reason (50'000 USD/EUR is quite standard). One is that attackers have to pay a lot to get their hands on one for analysis. Another is to have several layers of protection, several independent power sources, solid steel tamper barriers, etc. Still, they are designed to be secure when in a 19" rack in a secured data-center and when it becomes obvious fast that one has been removed.
I expect that a good hardware hacker can get into these phones with at most a few weeks of work and 3-4 devices to burn. After that opening one of these should be easy. And then there are the myriad ways of attacking this thing via software.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The title says "Inside Boeing's New Self-Destructing Smartphone" which is somewhat misleading; as it only refers to a mainstream news article - not any technical information about the 'inside' of the device.
will it blend?
Not sure where to go with this one. Is the joke supposed to be "So, Boeing has teamed up with Sony to use their batteries in a new smart phone..." or "Leveraging the battery technology used in the 787 Dreamliner..."
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The only difference seems to be that with this phone, if an attacker tries to get at the data you end up with a non-working phone and an attacker without data, while with an iPhone you end up with a working phone and an attacker without data. OK, this phone has also some more security claims, but of course they are not proven.
So, where's the added summary about the "related story" of how Google admits that Android's focus isn't on security and that malware writers should target their OS rather than Apple's or Microsoft's?
Or was that story only related when Slashdot was attempting to water down the discussion of Google's comments with a topic that actually had nothing what-so-ever to do with Google's comments?
Don't worry. I already know the answer to those questions.
It was nice when this site did a better job of disguising it's biases...
The Boeing "Black" will competete with the General Dynamics "Sectera Edge"...
http://www.gdc4s.com/sectera-edge-(sme-ped)-proddetail.html?taxonomyCat=141
The way I'd have the destruct work would be to encrypt everything and keep the key in a special tamper chip that will dump the key if a tamper trips.
Anyways, there are options to screw up your little proposal, such as a sensor inside that looks for disturbance. A light sensor where there should be no light, for example. Put a series of wires along the inside of the case, and if the resistance changes, such as from somebody cutting a wire trying to dremel their way in, trigger the tamper. Another option would be a button or something that's depressed normally. Remove a section of the case and it trips.
I don't read AC A human right
It's running Android. No troll here. The problem isn't LOSING THE ACTUAL PHONE, but the software being susceptible to an attack, and Android doesn't exactly have a good track record in that aspect.
I was going to say, I read about this at Ars a couple days ago, but then I saw this "article" links to an ABC news "article" - what's more, the "summary" is a direct quote of pretty much the entire ABC piece. But then I saw this "article" also links to the much superior Ars article. So, I say, bravo, Slashdot! Bravo.
I am Audience.
The biggest issue with this phone is not weather it can be tampered with without the owners knowledge, but that anyone that has one of these phones will be instantly noticeable as a high value target. The only people that this device makes sense for are public figures, senators, congressmen, CEO's of large defense contractors, ... Everyone else will be better protected by following simple security precautions and not carrying around a large flag that says I'm worth the effort.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
This sounds not like it will protect your data but will keep crypto researchers from finding that the NSA has put a back door into the product. Quite simply if it comes from the US, Canada, Australia, or the UK the product is not to be trusted. Which is sad as I am a Canadian and would love to make crypto products but at this point wouldn't trust even a company that had US citizens working for it let along based in the US.
This might be the most solid argument against these spy agencies, whatever "attacks" they are preventing, and whatever manipulations they are doing do not possibly equal the damage they have and are doing to the tech industries in our countries. I am willing to bet that the damage done to Cisco, google, IBM, and others will easily total the financial damage done in 9/11. Plus in all likelihood the plans for the next 9/11 will work just fine as they fully know not to trust any US comm technology.
Black box design
Buzzwords with "trusted"
Intended for gov agencies
_______________
NSA backdoor included
'Any attempt to disassemble the device would trigger functions that would delete the data and software contained within the device and make the device inoperable,'
Wouldn't the fact that your phone is now a brick be enough to let you know that someone had tried to tamper with your phone?
FIPS-140 (and 140-2) address exactly this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
At FIPS-140 Level 4, the crypto keys are stored on a unit that actively monitors for attack by environmental, electromagnetic, and physical methods.The physical is usually handled by a mesh of gridwires over the die.
The problem, of course, is Boeing is in bed with the government for Billions (Trillions) of dollars worth of military hardware, so don't think they'd sell you an Android phone before having a friendly chat with their friends at [A-Z]{3}.
In that case it should be easy and in this case it will be a feature.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
Layers upon layers - there's the "common" model that goes out to all field personnel and is assumed to be compromised within a few months.
Then, there's high security model that is designed to look like the common model, but goes only to high value targets and might be redesigned and redeployed every time one gets lost.
Then, there's the higher security model that is designed to look like the high security model, but....
Is it any wonder that a toilet seat can cost $9,000?
Anyone that is seriously interested in data or the internals of the device will have access to a high end precision laser/CNC machine that will remove the enclosure from around "safety" screws and other anti-tamper components, they will have purchased numerous devices and practiced and tested often enough to have a successful methodology. Once they have access to the internals, the same rules of security as applied to physical access to any computing devices applies.
The technology being offered will only generally thwart your bumbling thieves. Though, most governments are fairly bumbling, so, this might be just what the intelligence industry is looking for.
Forget about busting into the casing, one question I have, maybe a couple, is it hack proof? Someone can and will find a way to hack it, in the sense they could steal the information from via the airwaves [if you will].
I would think the phone isn't complete hack proof in some form or another. The information still has to be sent/received/collected does it not?
You wouldn't be able to steal it, they'd [i would think] have some sort of 'kill switch' should the phone end up lost or stolen. I'm not sure what they have, they may have numerous things for the user to ID themselves and a failure to do so would also result in a kill!
Talk about next level DOS attacks. *click* ... 2,000 phones self destruct in panic
I wonder what would happen if you used liquid nitrogen like cold boot attacks? Would the protection still be responsive at temperatures that low?
I see two attack vectors. Run the battery down and then open it.
Capcom and other arcade game manufacturers solved this already. Battery goes too low to maintain the encryption key in SRAM? Dump the encryption key.
[Disclaimer: I work for The Boeing Company, buy my comments are my own and do not reflect the position of the company.]
Let me state that this is probably a very good idea, even through this is the first that I've heard about the device. Often the biggest problem when dealing with smartphones is protecting sensitive data, be it emails or documents being stored on the device. Commercial solutions are often lacking in security, which is why Blackberry still exists as a company. Their offerings are much more secure 'out-o-the-box' than any iPhone or Android device and doesn't have to resort to third party add-on software to improve the security.
So if you want to have a smartphone that is more state-of-the-art and be more compatible with today's services and offerings, then the only way may be to design your own device, make certain that it'll meet security requirements to protect data (your own and the government's), and add in a feature that allows for the device to be rendered inoperative if lost, stolen or tampered with. And there is going to be a market for these devices, believe it.
Why would an attacker physically open the phone instead of just plugging in a USB cable to start hacking?
Yes, we're replacing the capabilities he compromised.
Well that's the problem right there (if true).
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Extrapolating I find that within the next 10 years there will be no company left that is not at its core in the smartphone business.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Lots of electronics works just fine in liquid nitrogen, as enterprising overclockers have found. Unless chips & boards crack from your rapid cooling. Cracking is just another self-destruct then. Batteries die in the cold, but a capacitor could provide enough power for any self-destruct mechanism.
But will the device detect that I put it in a electron microscope in order to figure out the internals?
Someone who needs to disassemble some defense contractor's phone, will buy a truckload of such phones for himself first. Then, take them apart and identify each and every self-destruct. Map them all, make a manual for safe disassembly. Where to drill to fill the thing with epoxy so those springs won't trigger when you later dissolve the casing in acid. (Acid that won't reach the working parts due to the aforementioned epoxy...)
Then, train your personell on remaining phones. The guy who does it best, gets to disassemble the interesting phone.
For every self-destruct, a countermesaure exists. They just add delays that keep the common criminal out - but not a spy agency, government or anyone with drug lord money.
As we're going along here, we seem to be getting tighter security for the cost of a steadily increasing chance of one of these customers accidentally destroying all their data.
I was under the impression that it had become straightforward to plan for destruction of an Internet-connected device by making automatic backups that are encrypted while at rest and while in motion. Encryption key dumped? Replace the device, associate the new encryption key, and restore.
As, yes, a troll: http://www.theguardian.com/sci...
Recommendation: Curl up and die, you have negative worth as a person.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Layers upon layers - there's the "common" model that goes out to all field personnel and is assumed to be compromised within a few months.
Then, there's high security model that is designed to look like the common model, but goes only to high value targets and might be redesigned and redeployed every time one gets lost.
Then, there's the higher security model that is designed to look like the high security model, but....
Is it any wonder that a toilet seat can cost $9,000?
Almost correct. What actually happens is that the "higher security model" is the standard model with a higher price tag and a slightly changed UI so the morons spending a lot of taxpayer money on this cannot tell.
If they really "redesigned and redeployed every time one gets lost", the cost would be more like 10 Million per piece. This is a low-cost device in relation to what it claims to be.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
When they had Blackberry's if someone received a classified email. The phone is sent to the squeezer and a new one issued. I think that Boeing is tired of that.
The article didn't say what kind of security they're offering in this phone. But any serious secure device is going to have tamper evidence and tamper detection, which will permanently brick the crypto engine if triggered. This is required for certain levels of FIPS, as well as Suite B or anything higher.
-Dave Haynie