Anti theft protection of our cherished device.

Sat Jun 30 23:15:28 CEST 2007

Frank Coenen wrote:
> True. But ones the thief removed your simcard I assume he will flash the 
> firmware... And then the theft-protection will be gone as well :-(
>
I've commented on this before.
The user is not always the owner.
This is clearest in the theft case.
It's also a factor when you might want to give phones to employees or 
children.
If I own the phone, I want the freedom to lock it down so hard that I 
can't get back into it with the debug board if I forget the password/phrase.
And yes, this does imply some things - kernel preventing all access to 
the NAND from all but the root user, DFU/u-boot supporting 
password/passphrase/signed updates, and hardware support.
Personally, I don't want a back door into the hardware where if someone 
has my phone for 30s, and a properly prepared laptop, they can boot an 
image from RAM with DFU, and install keyloggers/...