Can These Phones Fight Russian Hacking?

OULU, Finland—"The enemy is e'er coming from the eastward," according to Jari Sankala, a Finnish mobile-phone exec.

The history of independent Finland has been ane of fending off, pacifying, and more often than not trying to avert being absorbed into Russia, its giant neighbor to the e. Russian federation owned the identify for about a century; Finland is now in the midst of a long, nervous, and rather cold peace with the big bear adjacent door. Republic of finland has been "able to fend off Putin'south information war," perchance because in the back of their minds, Finns are ever about to be conquered past Russia, the magazine Strange Policy said in March.

With Russian hacking constantly in the news correct now, information technology might help to find some phones designed with an awareness of that specific threat. In Oulu, in the Finnish sub-Arctic, we institute Bittium, a secure mobile-telephone company whose bosses seem to be very, very aware of the behave's claws and fangs.

Bittium used to be called Elektrobit; it changed its name in 2022 after shedding the automotive-related parts of its business. Back in the Elektrobit days, the company fabricated the Terrestar Genus, an extremely ballsy hybrid satellite/mobile telephone that suffered from existence associated with a failing satellite provider.

At present, the company is making a range of hyper-secured "tough mobile" phones, both in mobile and satellite versions, ane of which even turns into a police body camera when you snap it into a holster. And Bittium is pretty certain the Russians can't hack them.=

"We are prepared against hacking wherever it comes," Sankala, Bittium's senior VP of defense and security, said. He added that Bittium has means to repel even human-in-the-middle attacks, such as "Stingray" imitation towers and the notorious SS7 network flaw.

"Doing baseband firewall, nosotros can defend against network-originated attacks," he said.

Tough Mobile

I tried out three of Bittium's phones, briefly. The Tough Mobile is a typical midrange, Qualcomm-powered slab, but it's ruggedized to military specs, and you tin reboot it into a super-secure mode that runs merely approved applications. The other phones were hybrid cellular-satellite models with big antennas you can screw on the summit. The phones are extra loud, and they work when they're covered in nigh freezing mud.

Bittium's security extends to manufacturing; it makes its phones in Finland, using some of the infrastructure Nokia left backside subsequently its 2022 collapse.

"That'due south part of the total security thinking," Sankala said. "Part of the device security is the place where information technology is manufactured, and so no one can put anything within. No one can trick anything when you control the whole product line."

The Section of Defense currently has LG, Samsung, Apple, and older BlackBerry products on its "approved products list" for multifunction mobile devices. Bittium isn't on the list. But its phones are some of the first to work on FirstNet, the public-safety-but network AT&T is setting upward on sectional spectrum. FirstNet, which is supposed to unify all of the chaotic networks that police and emergency responders use throughout the US, is either four or fifteen years tardily, depending on how yous define "late," although AT&T's announcement in late March reinvigorated hope that it will actually happen.

On FirstNet, Bittium's major competitors are California-based rugged phone maker Sonim and Motorola Solutions, which isn't the role of Motorola at present endemic by Lenovo only an independent American company.

And while Bittium's phones aren't DoD certified "nether our own name," Sankala said, the visitor does white-characterization products, and its promotional videos for mission-critical battleground systems that use reserved NATO frequencies are pretty American.

With 450 people at its headquarters, Bittium is i of the bigger tech firms in Oulu, a surprising tech hub near the Arctic Circle that's also habitation to Polar fitness trackers and Nokia's 5G base-station manufacturing business. When Nokia fell autonomously effectually 2022, Oulu reinvented itself as a hub of tech startups, with dozens of pocket-size to mid-sized tech companies now calling the metropolis of 250,000 domicile.

"During the Microsoft era of Nokia, at that place were and so many unemployed engineers. That was a very good time to hire people," Sankala said, smiling.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/feature/16564/can-these-phones-fight-russian-hacking

Posted by: haleagagedly.blogspot.com

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