brachiosaurusTIL for at last 15 years US government has been able to implant hardware into USB cables to turn them into hacking devices with wireless capability.
「黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui」 | (aka: 鳳凰院 凶真 Hououin Kyouma)Pro Tip: Leave a unique mark somewhere on the cable so if someone switches it, you can tell it apart. Always check for the mark before you use the cable, every time.
(Yes I actually do this, I’m paranoid)
If you’re really paranoid you should buy all your stuff in a brick and mortar store. You’d have to be high up on a list for it to even be worth someone’s time, but intercepting a package and swapping the contents is pretty easy to do, typical Tuesday multi-agency gun ring bust for some postal inspectors
My older brother is abusive, and I need precautions to be safe.
That’s my threat model.
I actually would rather run a phone with stock OS with verified boot, rather than LineageOS but with bootloader unlocked. Evil Maid from someone you know wanting fuck around with you is more scary to me than government tbh
(I don’t have a pixel for graphene)
Edit: Also these cables cost like $200 online from HAK5. My brother definitely can pull some shit if he tried. He’s in Computer Science in college.
Only with a few rare phones… most phones just gets bricked if you attempt to lock it under a custom os because they don’t support custom keys.
Pixel supports it, but I don’t have a pixel. (If I did I would just use Graphene lol)
New is expensive
and I really distrust the used market… feels very sketchy and it could have hidden damage that doesn’t manifest itself until the return window is already passed (if they even allow a return at all), also I have a paranoia about getting an IMEI that a criminal have used and then cops come knocking thinking its ME doing the illegal activity (cuz you know they do the “oops wrong address” thing often and they’ve shot people to death over it )