Privacy

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Android 15 will run Bluetooth with your phone still turned off. (security.googleblog.com)

submitted 5 months ago by trippingonthewire@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I saw this on infinity for Reddit earlier, I don't know if there's a workaround for this or not.

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[–] HelloHotel@lemm.ee 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

it looks like its going to be a hardware feature. if the main CPU is off, it implies the radio circuitry and its CPU (the BBM) are still powered. give google this at least, the special new Bluetooth API will be accessible to whatever OS is alive and awake to send commands (even if I don't trust that "off" means "off"). the fact that its using encryption (that's too complicated to be made out of Integrated Circut logic) means its likely another software feature added to the BBM co-processor (it handles all radio tasks on the phone). this all but confirms the BBM (at least going forward) will still get power, be awake and have access to the (transmit (TX) and reseave (RX) functions of the) radios even when everything else is properly off.

EDIT: or it could be an abuse of a generic BLE beacon mechanism that's "just there for whatever the consumer would need it for". but if they are doing proprietary encryption like they claim, that's not really possible without updating the BBM's software to add another feature.

[–] DictatorGator@feddit.de 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

We could wait for the implementation from the GrapheneOS team ! I'm pretty sure that they would implement it in a way that would be safe for the user.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev -1 points 5 months ago

If it's hardware controlled, then the Graphene OS team would have to find a flaw in the hardware, or trust that when they tell the hardware to shut off, that it really does shut off, or find a way to verify that the hardware is really of. But even if they could tell the hardware to shut off, verify that it's off, and then shut down, the hardware could turn back on after the software is off and the software would be none the wiser.

The only way 2 ways anybody can be relatively sure this feature is off are:

pulling the battery:
- good luck with that with phones that don't have removable batteries
- hopefully there won't be a small backup battery to power this specific circuit
physically disconnecting this circuit from other circuits:
- that might mean saying goodbye to bluetooth functionality on the phone

The alternative is getting a linux phone with hardware that doesn't have this feature.

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