device recovery

Jeff Andros jeff at bigredtj.com
Mon Jul 2 08:30:12 CEST 2007


On 7/1/07, James Buchanan <z.b.longladder at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> Your're assuming an awfully clever thief here...I guess it's possible that
> someone who pickpockets cell phones might know to flash the firmware, but
> it's probable that most don't--I shouldn't think the majority of common
> thieves would even be aware of the open nature of the OpenMoko--they'd just
> think it a shiny, expensive cell, prime for a new SIM.
>
> <snip>


well, they won't know of the open nature unless that other thread with the
TV ads kicks in and we splash the thing around the interblogosphereweb....

but seriously, it's not the thief that you really need to worry about being
clever... it's his fence, and yeah, some of those guys are clever enough to
flash a phone, or know someone who is, so don't assume this, what I'd think
about is integrating this functionality into u-boot, where it's harder to
get to, then altering the u-boot upgrader to require a password: no
password, no flashy.  We're talking about reading then sending one line
commands to UARTs for a GPS fix, then an sms, I don't see anything that
couldn't easily be handled by the bootloader each time the phone is turned
on, especially since both the GPS and GSM hardware are separate subsystems

I would really hate for anyone to be a tester, but I think it would be
interesting to gather data from multiple tracking methods(u-Boot, userland,
k-space)-- we could implement all of them easily and then see, as phones
were (god forbid) stolen(knock on wood just in case)

-- 
Jeff
O|||||||O
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/attachments/20070701/4bb0d543/attachment.htm 


More information about the community mailing list