alt Hacker NewsPretty much any modern phone is also full of blobs that run on the main CPU to ensure basic functionality, with only a handful of exceptions. Just consider how many features stop working or get severely degraded on various phones when you use a clean AOSP build on them (provided that you can do it at all in the first place). Android's driver infrastructure effectively encourages non-free blobs in "vendor" partitions, and many things are purposely moved from the GPLv2 kernel to the userspace so they don't have to be copylefted. If you want to run a non-Android OS on these devices you either have to fill the gaps yourself or use these blobs through compatibility layers.
> at that point you still are trusting external communication to those devices with their proprietary blobs
Just as you do with any kind of peripheral, whether it implements what it's doing purely in hardware or with an embedded microcontroller.
> There's some debate as to whether the USB stack for communication to the modem is less secure than IOMMU as well.
You can have "some debate" on absolutely anything, but that doesn't yet mean it makes any sense. You have communication protocols on top of IOMMUs as well which are subject to exactly the same security considerations as potential exploits in the USB stack, so whatever debate you're referring to is unlikely to be held in good faith. I wonder why you mention it unprompted, as it's fairly off-topic here.
Replies
> You can have "some debate" on absolutely anything, but that doesn't yet mean it makes any sense.
Sure, but from the fact that anything can be debated it does not follow that any given debate is nonsensical, which is kind of what you did there.
> ...whatever debate you're referring to is unlikely to be held in good faith.
I don't know which is odder, that assertion, or the notion that two completely different security models can't be debated in good faith because they're effectively identical, because of hand-wavy reasons like, "You have communication protocols on top of IOMMUs as well which are subject to exactly the same security considerations as potential exploits in the USB stack..."
Certainly there's some kind of argument to be made that the Librem 5 is relevant to this post as its adherents see it as a viable alternative to iOS and/or Android-based devices. I disagree, but everyone's willing to make different compromises and that's fair.
I only mention that because a contingent of voices as high in volume as they are few in number endlessly shoehorning the Librem 5 into numerous threads no matter how much of a non-sequitur it takes, has me suddenly paying more attention these days to what's coming from the Purism camp. The more I do the more disingenuous the rhetoric seems.
It may just be a coincidence, but for a project with such a fraught history and tarnished reputation, it doesn't do anything to increase my trust in it.
> Just consider how many features stop working or get severely degraded on various phones when you use a clean AOSP build on them.
That's mainly because of device trees. The firmware also isn't distributed via separate flash storage on the device, but I don't consider that making a difference. It's still proprietary firmware running on proprietary hardware. On Qualcomm-based Pixel devices, cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GNSS are all isolated and sandboxed.
> It's also interesting that you mention it unprompted, as it's fairly off-topic here
A primary reason people complain about proprietary blobs is security. People claim that the Librem 5 is more open and secure, but it still uses the same proprietary modules as a Pixel running GrapheneOS. Does Librem 5 have signature checks for the firmware and a tamper-proof bootloader to load the firmware and OS, or can someone sell you a compromised Librem 5?
Is it more free, open, and secure than a Pixel running Android? Because, the only difference I'm seeing is how the firmware is stored and Google Play Services. And with GrapheneOS, only how the firmware is stored. Everything else points to a more insecure system with Librem 5.