Samsung May Be Adding Kill Switch for Stolen Smartphones

[alidan]

yay, controversial opinion here.
unless you are mugged, or the phone is literally ripped out of your hand, you deserve to have it stolen.
seriously, if you are that irresponsible with a 5-900$ device, you shouldn't have one in the first place.
i hate that they are effectively killing the used market for these too, but making you be forced to go through someone who will play you maybe 50$ and sell it for upwards 400$ just because you cant be sure if you are getting a stolen phone.

 

[shahrooz]

what's up with the pic?

 

[deus_irae]

On the third world this still means nothing. Even if they cannot use the phone, they can sell it for spare parts, so the market value is still there since you can buy a new screen for your Galaxy S4 for 80 bucks instead of spending another 600 bucks for a new phone. Batteries can be sold, SD cards can be sold, the case and parts of the case can be sold, querty keyboards can be sold... We need something that destroy the phone and all its parts so it cannot be used even for spare parts for other phones.

 

[catfishtx]

Great, now we will have phone "chop" shops springing up all over the place. If I steal someone's phone, all I need to do is immediately turn it off or pull the battery if possible. Then I disassemble, sell the parts, and profit. The kill code did not have a chance to brick the phone. This helps how?

 

[mynith]

Not sure this works. Either the buyer will get scammed and get a broken phone or the thief will have to steal yet another phone to get his money. The actual owner of the phone gains nothing. Only the knowledge that his property can be made worthless with the push of a button. Good job.

 

[mynith]

Using the built in GPS to find the thief will be a much better way to stop this type of crime. A lot of smartphones have nonremoveable batteries anyway.

 

[InvalidError]

Great, now we will have phone "chop" shops springing up all over the place. If I steal someone's phone, all I need to do is immediately turn it off or pull the battery if possible. Then I disassemble, sell the parts, and profit. The kill code did not have a chance to brick the phone. This helps how?

If they do this properly and thoroughly:
- system-level authentication enumerates all authentication keys during the boot sequence on the CPU, camera DSP, RF ICs, display controller, touch controller, etc.'s secure microcontrollers - each component is factory-programmed with authentication keys for all the components the finished device shipped with
- the authentication set is checked to verify that all components are authorized to work together and if they aren't (unauthorized part/repair), the offending parts simply refuse to complete initialization
- when the device eventually gets a chance to phone home, any remaining parts that have also been reported stolen get disabled
- the 'disabled' state may however let some subsystems like GPS and RF operate in limited mode - just enough to report GPS coordinates to authorities

The screen (which is often fused with the front glass and touch sensor) and main PCB are the most valuable parts of a smartphone or tablet so if both of them and most modular stuff containing microcontrollers are kill-switched, the rest of the phone except for the battery is largely worthless even as parts since manufacturer intervention is required to re-program authentication sets after swapping components.

 

[7munkee]

So why would the government have the ability to wipe your phone? I know I will NEVER get one now. Dont support companys that work with the government to enslave you further that you already are.

 

[Elvey]

Someone claims that we already have a kill-switch - a central IMEI database - and they don't work. This is bullshit. What we have is carriers desperately avoiding using using it for the past 6 years or so. Even today, the major US carriers don't check or populate the main, standard (GSMA-run) international database of stolen IMEIs/ESNs. They just started using their own, new, US-only database instead. Because that way, their sales will not suffer, which they would if they started doing the moral thing and all used the same database. This is NOT conjecture. Pretty much the only folks who have used the int'l database are the folks who've been required to do so by law - the Australians - for around 5 years now.

 

[Elvey]

The int'l database, if broadly implemented, WOULD be effective. The value of a stolen phone would plummet, because while yes, IMEIs can be reprogrammed on some phones, it's a lot more difficult than, say rooting or unlocking a phone.

 

[Giovanni-L]

I've had one of the most intense WTF moments of the past few days when i saw the picture of this article! I'm not on a DayZ website, am i?