this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2023
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Technology

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Smartphones With Popular Qualcomm Chip Secretly Share Private Information [LOW QUALITY ARTICLE - PLE (www.nitrokey.com)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by tardigrada@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
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Affected smart phones are Sony Xperia XA2 and likely the Fairphone and many more Android phones which use popular Qualcomm chips. The data is sent without user consent, unencrypted, and even when using a Google-free Android distribution. This is possible because the Qualcomm chipset itself sends the data, circumventing any potential Android operating system setting and protection mechanisms.

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[–] Hirom@beehaw.org 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Has anyone ~~else replicated it? or~~ have more specific information on affected phone&chips?

I tested with an Android phone that has a Qualcomm chip, but didn't see any DNS query for izatcloud.net. My test involved monitoring wifi traffic using a separate device, rebooting the android device, and disabling/enabling wifi a couple times.

This post include a few plugs for the NitroPhone (which is unaffected), and appear on the NitroPhone's vendor website. I wonder if they're overstating how widespread the issue is, which would benefit their device's marketing.

Update: found a couple fairphone forum threads that confirm the issue, and give more details.

[–] rysiek@szmer.info 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Looks like it's less suspicious (but still crap):
https://mstdn.social/@larma@mastodon.social/110260142005927299

  • IZAT/XTRA is Qualcomm's alternative to Google's network location system. It's entirely running in userspace, not in firmware. Its configuration and proprietary client library can be found on the /vendor partition of many qualcomm devices that run LineageOS or derivatives and is considered by LineageOS to be part of the device specific proprietary vendor blobs that need to be included for a fully functional system (even if it's typically possible to run without it).
[–] Hirom@beehaw.org 6 points 2 years ago

Good to know. Userspace means there's some hope of disabling this, possibly without root.