Malicious trojanized apps

[luckybit]

@Warren

But what you are saying is even with approved open hardware and tools that attempt to verify the hardware is what it says it is, there is no way reliable way to know a piece of hardware doesn’t have a physical free loader installed, maybe a key logger apparatus. Might not even be the unit in question, could be the iphone sitting in the pocket that is using its positional sensors to convert typing vibrations into a map that can result in key logging with high accuracy. ((?))

Hmm its like betting the NSA couldn’t hack a manufacturing process. But the same routines that makes SAFE work in software might be applicable to the manufacturing process?

I’m saying if the NSA or any other government wants to hack the manufacturing process it’s going to be much more expensive and difficult for the end user and for manufacturers.

Now you have a central point of failure which are the trusted foundries. You can’t trust the hardware manufacturers nor can you know with 100% certainty that the hardware doesn’t contain a hardware trojan unless you’ve made the hardware yourself and inspected every step of the process.

I would say it’s possible to do it but the hardware would then be much more expensive than ordinary hardware so that poor people cannot afford it. The truth is that any motherboard you have could be vulnerable and you’d have no way of detecting it.

For this reason it’s not realistic to think SAFE Network will protect you from the NSA. It’s not going to protect you from the NSA or similar agencies. What it will likely do is protect your privacy to the point where the NSA would be afraid to act on their capabilities due to the fact that if they do it would reveal their capabilities.

Programs which are already known about the NSA is more likely to act on. So everything Snowden leaked the NSA can now act on that because the world knows about it. On the other hand if there are some secret undetectable vulnerabilities in hardware or in software then its in their best interest or the best interest of any similar agency not to let the world know their capabilities.

The fact is that it’s possible to make undetectable hardware trojans and barely detectable software trojans. The undetectable hardware trojans are so undetectable that even if you have specialized equipment you wont be able to see it. The barely detectable software trojans are only detectable if you know exactly what to look for and most of the time no one will know how to look for it.

So my own opinion on security is that you cannot trust your hardware or your software. Open hardware will not help unless you control every step in the manufacturing process because the design of the hardware isn’t the only issue. And then even if you were to use open hardware, open software, and all of it were secure, what you have connected to your USB ports could frag you.

These issues will go beyond the capability and resources that the Maidsafe team has to address them unless Safecoins are worth a whole lot.