Emergency permissions (on mobile devices)

Apps & Core Settings
1

Keywords

#Battery

#emergency_permissions

Go to

Settings :backhand_index_pointing_right:

:backhand_index_pointing_right: Notifications

:backhand_index_pointing_right: Emergency permissions on mobile devices

:backhand_index_pointing_right: “Allow emergency permissions” - slider

(see attached snapshot)

Notfallberechtigungen an Mobilgeräte - Schieber
Notfallberechtigungen an Mobilgeräte - Schieber576×1280 51.1 KB

A question that came up in a discussion with someone who is not particularly impressed with today’s cell phones, mainly because the batteries are hardly removable anymore.

But let’s get back to the battery issue later.

I’m building a bridge here, a transition.

First, two questions:

  1. Can these emergency permissions ACTUALLY be disabled under Settings :backhand_index_pointing_right::backhand_index_pointing_right: “Allow emergency permissions”?

and

  1. Can these permissions NOT be enabled from ANYWHERE OUTSIDE, say by someone who has “key” access?

Of course, in the context of the discussion, the question will arise as to why on earth anyone would not want this feature and would want to turn it off completely… but, folks, what if this feature were something that did not benefit people (assuming that to be the case) and was capable of activating something in the device that did NOT just destroy the device?

In response to this question, the questioner referred me to Nitropenta, 37 deaths and 3,000 injuries on September 17 and 18, 2024, in Lebanon.

:backhand_index_pointing_right: So, (let’s say) can we assume that there is NO hidden switch to activate a Trojan Horse via “emergency permissions” ?

I’m asking for a friend.

Thanks to the technicians and honourable devs for having a deeper look into this imho rather unusual matter,

Heinz from :austria:

2

Thanks for the question, I slightly modified the title as the English translation for this section is “Wireless Emergency Alerts”.

Yes you can disable them, as your device shows. Are you still receiving ermergency alerts with that disabled?

The Lebanon Pager attack (sorry I didn’t read through the details of this recently but did follow it at the time) was a hardware exploit baked into the firmware, so is far beyond what user-facing software was running on the devices.

I would say that in my understanding certainly there are closed source firmware blobs that run on all android devices that haven’t been mainlined to the Linux kernel (and maybe even then) regardless of them running Android, Linux user-space variants like Ubuntu Touch, Droidian, or Sailfish, etc. (as these systems rely on Halium and the underlying Android blobs for the device) even from smaller privacy focused manufacturers.

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