• Off Topic

  • tempted to transition from GOS to iOS

Having just experienced this myself - some people (with deep pockets or state actors) are infecting iPhones with malware en masse right now. Lockdown mode doesn't do anything. Apple devices are just a too large target nowadays it seems. I could never go back.

  • de0u replied to this.

    Another datapoint: Even old android devices with lineage are safer. Smaller target -> less off-the-shelf zero days.

      hardballs Having just experienced this myself - some people (with deep pockets or state actors) are infecting iPhones with malware en masse right now.

      What is meant by "en masse"? If the number of comprised devices qualifies as massive, it should be possible to cite a source?

          de0u I'm referring to the velocity. I don't know if it already happened on a massive scale. The malware seems to be able to spread via hijacked connections to apple servers and they did it from privileged network positions. Even going through another iPhone's hotspot got it reinfected. Thanks to apple for making such a mess of background connections.. Like getting root certs from random seeming Akamai hosts (not within "their" IP block). I've seen enough. Still kept an infected phone and MacBook but now it's dormant or has been remotely wiped.

              hardballs You seem to be writing from a position of being highly confident in your claims, which are still quite unclear to me. Surely you have some evidence of this "en masse" infection you could provide us with, so we at least could read more about the potential malware that is allegedly spreading with high "velocity"?

                  fid02 Friends and family had their devices malfunctioning and were getting locked out of accounts. Manipulation of local filesystems, pcaps of floods, replay attacks and C2 traffic. All devices were up to date. The evidence would de-anonymize me. Context: I pissed off a large company. Central Europe.

                    hardballs They can compromise the device with generic firmware and OS vulnerabilities. Using a device without full security patches is always a bad idea since you're vulnerable to bargain bin ancient exploits which stopped working on up-to-date phones years ago. It's 99.99% standard AOSP and running on top of widely deployed hardware with standard drivers and firmware, etc.

                        GrapheneOS You're right of course. Nevertheless, those old devices provided me with a last line of defense.

                          wuseman Honestly, if you can live with using half-baked browsers, mediocre keyboards and being locked in then go for an Iphone.

                          What are you talking about? Safari has extension support and some pretty damn awesome extensions, not even available for Firefox. What we have in Android with the default Chrome browser is a nasty, locked down spyware ridden concoction that is on its way to kill off proper extension support. The GrapheneOS devs have done a commendable job with Vanadium (even though it is about as bare bones as it gets), but I suspect it will be an uphill battle as Google transforms the codebase of Chrome into a user hostile data harvesting mess.
                          Also, you can have any keyboard you want. It is obvious that you judge iPhones just by hearsay.

                              AlanZ Safari has extension support and some pretty damn awesome extensions, not even available for Firefox.

                              Safari allows me to use I Don't Care About cookies or user scripts? This is news to me.

                              What we have in Android with the default Chrome browser is a nasty, locked down spyware ridden concoction that is on its way to kill off proper extension support.

                              I don't care about stock. I care about what I can get.

                              Also, you can have any keyboard you want.

                              My experience is that any iOS keyboard is 5 years behind Gboard on Android.

                                  wuseman Safari allows me to use I Don't Care About cookies or user scripts? This is news to me

                                  Yes, there are extensions that allow this functionality and more.

                                    25 days later

                                    knirirr apple already does advertising that's a decent chunk of their business and they also are invested into ai. There incentives are in everyway against privacy

                                      AlanZ slimbook system76 etc theirs a lotore then just thinkpads I don't see a problem

                                          13 days later

                                          Guysinhowr
                                          No thanks, not interested in that trash hardware. Been there, not going back.

                                            DeletedUser115

                                            decent apps like FairEmail just don't exist on iOS.

                                            I think Preside comes close, although I use the Airmail Business edition because I value pretty looks above everything else : )

                                                AlanZ I think Preside comes close, although I use the Airmail Business edition because I value pretty looks above everything else : )

                                                Does Airmail business support sending via aliases? With fairemail you can set up separate identities for sending (e.g. foo@test.domain.com, bar@test.domain.com), although you cant do this on the fly while sending an email. It has to be done in advance in settings.