CSI Stick grabs data from cell phones (CNet) [LWN.net]

CSI Stick grabs data from cell phones (CNet)

Posted Sep 3, 2008 16:31 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
In reply to: CSI Stick grabs data from cell phones (CNet) by gouyou
Parent article: CSI Stick grabs data from cell phones (CNet)

That wouldn't necessarily help. If your open source phone follows standard protocols, for things like syncing files via Bluetooth and the like, then gadgets like this would work just fine.

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CSI Stick grabs data from cell phones (CNet)

Posted Sep 11, 2008 4:08 UTC (Thu) by dmag (subscriber, #17775) [Link]

No, the "CSI tool" relies on standard software running on the phone. It *only* supports Motorola and Samsung phones. It says right on their website "If a device has been flashed with a firmware update [..] CSI Stick may not be able to acquire any data". It'll bet they never support the Blackberry, because they probably require a password.

Therefore, having an open source phone would help because
1) at the least, we'd be able to turn off the software
2) we'd be able to replace it with better software (require passwords, transmit encrypted data, store data encrypted, etc.)

(P.S. To whoever mentioned JTAG: It's not the wonderful standard you think it is. Your JTAG reader must have knowledge of every CPU, plus any flash device protocols. Oh, and every device will have a non-standard JTAG pinout, so you'll have a suitcase full of connectors. You can buy something like a universal JTAG programmer [1], but it will set you back $2,000 and you'll have to make your own cables and write your own initialization scripts for every board. To debug the scripts, you need an expensive scope. It could be done, but it would be a *ton* of work.)

[1] http://www.abatron.ch/products/bdi-family/bdi1000-bdi2000...