Ask HN: Can I use grapheneos or flx1 Linux phone to prevent cell tower hacking? Lots of interesting discussions about cell phone networks lately. Cache of devices capable of crashing cell network is found in NYC https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45345514 Fake cell phone towers ICE is using to track people https://www.forbes.com/sites/the-wiretap/2025/09/09/how-ice-... And, at the same time, interesting conversations about linux phones, like GrapheneOS (de-googled android) and FLX1s (pure Linux phone): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45312326 My question is: are any of these alternatives helpful against these kinds of novel attacks? If you are on a phone using a network vanilla provider like tmobile or otherwise, is there any way to prevent your phone from trying to connect to a fake network? If I controlled the entire cell phone stack, like I would with FLX1s, then could I have something like the ssh initial connection signature: Could we do the same thing with a cell tower and not jump to it unless it was approved manually and a signature of that tower was stored for future connections? It would be a bit of a pain to accept a new cell tower when I'm in a new city, but I could imagine syncing a whitelisted trusted set of cell phone towers (ha, when I think of that the whole idea of "trusted" is laughable). But, at least I would have more insight into when I am getting surveilled. And, I could say "not today ICE!" or "tmobile, idk, please give me my HN fix, I don't even care if you know I'm aware my government is tracking me as I pay the service fee!" I bet a whitelist hosted on github would be faster to update than tmobile installing new cell phone towers so privacy enthusiasts could enable their own safety. |