LOL! Nothing Matters (Android Edition)

One of the things that did piss me off about “The Emails!” was learning that Hilary took an unsecured Blackberry to all kinds of places—China, SCIFs—that she really shouldn’t have.

Well, per Scott’s post below, apparently Trump’s still carrying around his old Android with him.

Over at Lawfare, Nicholas Weaver thinks this is a really bad idea.

Lost amid the swirling insanity of the Trump administration’s first week, are the reports of the President’s continued insistence on using his Android phone (a Galaxy S3 or perhaps S4). This is, to put it bluntly, asking for a disaster. President Trump’s continued use of a dangerously insecure, out-of-date Android device should cause real panic. And in a normal White House, it would.
A Galaxy S3 does not meet the security requirements of the average teenager, let alone the purported leader of the free world. The best available Android OS on this phone (4.4) is a woefully out-of-date and unsupported. The S4, running 5.0.1, is only marginally better. Without exaggerating, hacking a Galaxy S3 or S4 is the type of project I would assign as homework for my advanced undergraduate classes. It’d be as simple as downloading a suitable exploit—depending on the version, Stagefright will do—and then entice Trump to clicking on a link. Alternatively, one could advertise malware on Breitbart and just wait for Trump to visit.

Once compromised, the phone becomes a bug—even more catastrophic than Great Seal—able to record everything around it and transmit the information once it reattaches to the network. And to be clear even a brand new, fully updated Android or iPhone is insufficient: The President of the United States is worth a great many multiples of expensive zero-day exploits.

I think you should go over and read Weaver’s post and, if you know about this stuff, perhaps let me know if I’m wrong to be…. completely freaked out by yet another example of what a ny’rl ka’th’k R’lyeh horror show this entire week has been.

(via Kindred Winecoff)

(image: attribution CC BY-SA 2.0)