Five years ago, I bought a Supernote A5. It was (and mostly still is) a great device for reading and writing on an eInk display, and it runs plain old linux.
The deciding reason I went for this device instead of the competition is that I was "under the impression" that they were about to enable full SSH access to the device! Awesome!
"Why were you under that impression?", I hear the skeptics ask. Well, their spokesperson has stated that they would do so. Via mail, and on reddit, publicly, multiple times. I was still torn, so sent them a DM, asking if this was ineed factual. "Yes", they said, "the next quarterly update will enable SSH access!".
Great!
Well, it's been 5 years. They did not follow through. A couple updates were published, none contained the promised functionality, the spokesperson stopped answering questions about SSH. The last software update I received is from 2.5yrs ago. Mentions of the original Supernote A5 have largely been scrubbed from their website.
Let me be clear, the device still functions perfectly. But it is in danger of becoming e-waste because it is so needlessly complicated to get stuff on the device. I'm currently in need of an ebook reader with (ideally) OPDS capability, and I am pretty confident I'd be able to get something like koreader running on this, or at least just run a script to sync files over SSH. Also, I frankly feel wounded in my pride having a Linux device in my possession which refuses to do my bidding (I'm joking of course, but also I am 100% serious).
Here's all I know:
- plugging it in via USB, the device reads as an MTP device, with access only to the documents/books/... stored on it
- you can place an
update.zip
file (obtained from the SN website) into the root of that MTP directory, and upon reboot, the device will update. To me, this appears to be the most promising route of gaining access.
- unfortunately, the zip file is encrypted. The decryption key clearly has to be known to the device, but since I have no access to it,...
I'm a software engineer, but I have zero knowledge of the "dark arts", so to speak. If anyone could help me (or point me into the right direction!), I would really be grateful. I don't want this (generally nice) product to turn into a paperweight instead of a paper replacement :(
Hi. I am a software engineer with a background in IT security. My girlfriend is a literal network security engineer.
I showed her this thread and she said: don't bother, just use http on your local network.
Anyways, I am going to disengage from this thread now. Skepticism against things one doesn't fully understand can be healthy, but this is an insane mix of paranoia and naïveté.
You are not a target; the things you are afraid of will never happen; and if they did, they would not have the consequences you think they would.
Your router will NOT magically expose your traffic to the internet (what would that even mean?? Like, if it spontaneously started port forwarding to your Jellyfin server (how? By just randomly guessing the port and IP???), someone would still need to actively request that traffic, AND know your login credentials, AND CARE).
Your ISP does not give a shit about you owning or streaming copyrighted material over your local network. It has no stake in that.
Graphene is not an ultimate arbiter of IT security, but the reason it "distrusts networks" is because you take your phone with you, constantly moving into actual untrusted networks (i.e. ones you do not own).
Hosting Jellyfin on Graphene will not make it more secure, whatsoever.
If every device is assumed compromised, and compromising devices with knowledge that you watch media is a threat in your model, then even putting an SD card with media in your phone and clicking play is dangerous. Which is stupid.
If you actually assume your router is malicious, then please assume that when you initially downloaded your VPN client, it was also compromised and your VPN is not trustworthy.
The way I see it, you have two options: