4 ms·

I'm talking about drivers. Can you provide an example? How the firmware needed for your camera can be executed on its own?

chli 12y ago
e.g. The camera firmware blob could be tagging all your pictures with some kind of hidden watermark. Who knows ? EDIT: Just to clarify, firmware blobs are not executed "on their own", they are normally executed on a micro-controller that is embedded in the baseband / power management / gpu / any other chip.
- comzeradd 12y ago
  That was exactly my point.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    That my have been what you meant, but it wasn't what you wrote in the blog post. And besides, it's irrelevant if it runs "on its own" or not; in fact, technically, only the bootloader runs on its own, everything else has to be loaded by some piece of software, including the OS itself.
cmiles74 12y ago
The firmware that runs the baseband processor manages communication via the radio (and sometimes wifi and bluetooth as well)[0]. Once loaded, that firmware will have plenty of opportunities to phone home or otherwise provide information about your location, activities, etc. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseband_processor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseband_processor
ctz 12y ago
There is usually little or no security boundary between the AP and complex peripherals (like the baseband, cameras, GPU, audio subsystem, etc.) Usually these will have direct access to main memory (like having a DMA channel given to them), and will have firmware loaded into them by the AP at boot. After which, they can damage the integrity and privacy of your 100%-OSS AP software. The baseband, particularly, is of concern because it's connected to the outside world, and is powerful and complex. And almost always closed, and provided by an American company (Qualcomm).
marcosdumay 12y ago
Why would anybody ever write code that isn't intended to be executed? The camera executes its firmware, and it has direct access to the memory, flash, network, etc.
userbinator 12y ago
FYI the cameras in most phones (at least the ones I've played around with) contain no firmware. It's just a relatively dumb image sensor connected via a MIPI interface to the main SoC, and is under control of it. It cannot access memory on its own.
- mkesper 12y ago
  Do you have any blogs/articles about that? Free software video hardware is still hard to get afaik.
  - userbinator 12y ago
    Don't know of any particular blogs/articles but you can e.g. Google "OV5647 datasheet" and read the datasheet for the RPi's camera chip. There's not much that could be a security concern on the camera module itself, since it's relatively dumb; it's what controls it that's a different issue.

chli 12y ago

e.g. The camera firmware blob could be tagging all your pictures with some kind of hidden watermark. Who knows ? EDIT: Just to clarify, firmware blobs are not executed "on their own", they are normally executed on a micro-controller that is embedded in the baseband / power management / gpu / any other chip.

comzeradd 12y ago
That was exactly my point.
- icebraining 12y ago
  That my have been what you meant, but it wasn't what you wrote in the blog post. And besides, it's irrelevant if it runs "on its own" or not; in fact, technically, only the bootloader runs on its own, everything else has to be loaded by some piece of software, including the OS itself.

cmiles74 12y ago

The firmware that runs the baseband processor manages communication via the radio (and sometimes wifi and bluetooth as well)[0]. Once loaded, that firmware will have plenty of opportunities to phone home or otherwise provide information about your location, activities, etc. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseband_processor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseband_processor

ctz 12y ago

There is usually little or no security boundary between the AP and complex peripherals (like the baseband, cameras, GPU, audio subsystem, etc.) Usually these will have direct access to main memory (like having a DMA channel given to them), and will have firmware loaded into them by the AP at boot. After which, they can damage the integrity and privacy of your 100%-OSS AP software. The baseband, particularly, is of concern because it's connected to the outside world, and is powerful and complex. And almost always closed, and provided by an American company (Qualcomm).

marcosdumay 12y ago

Why would anybody ever write code that isn't intended to be executed? The camera executes its firmware, and it has direct access to the memory, flash, network, etc.

userbinator 12y ago

FYI the cameras in most phones (at least the ones I've played around with) contain no firmware. It's just a relatively dumb image sensor connected via a MIPI interface to the main SoC, and is under control of it. It cannot access memory on its own.

mkesper 12y ago
Do you have any blogs/articles about that? Free software video hardware is still hard to get afaik.
- userbinator 12y ago
  Don't know of any particular blogs/articles but you can e.g. Google "OV5647 datasheet" and read the datasheet for the RPi's camera chip. There's not much that could be a security concern on the camera module itself, since it's relatively dumb; it's what controls it that's a different issue.