With the iPhone 13 on Google Fi, what are the risks to enabling 5G using a Heicard?

Question

With the iPhone 13 on Google Fi, what are the risks to enabling 5G using a Heicard?

I think my question essentially reduces to asking the following: How much could an iPhone be compromised via the connection to the sim card?

The context for this is that both Google Fi and iPhone 12 & 13 support 5G, but iOS ships with the wrong carrier bundle config settings for Google Fi to enable 5G. This has been the case for over a year.

Users have figured out one can use a Heicard to change the carrier bundle used for Google Fi to one that has the correct settings to enable 5G. This involves physically installing a small microprocessor around the sim card to alter the data sent between the sim card and the iPhone.

Because Heicards aren't made by a major manufacture, I'm not sure if I should trust they don't have any back doors or accidental security vulnerabilities. How much of a risk is this? Hence my wanting to know how much an iPhone could be compromised via the connection to the sim card.

Could SMS messages be read? Is data that is stored in applications, like my password manager, safe?

Thanks in advance for any insight anyone has!

[Link Edited by Moderator]

Posted on Nov 10, 2021 10:13 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 10, 2021 10:28 AM in response to arbitraryletters

There is no way to know and using such a card is entirely up to you. Heicard was developed specifically to hack and allow locked devices onto networks other than the one they are locked to. So how much faith you put in that such things are produced and distributed without any malicious or possibly malicious use is up to you.

Since they are unregulated devices, and illegal in some countries, you use them entirely at your own risk. They are made by companies with web sites that IMO certainly don’t inspire confidence in their corporate integrity.

What did Google Fi support say when you asked them about the carrier settings? They certainly have the ability to push out changes for their network settings if they are needed.

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Answer 2

Nov 12, 2021 8:40 AM in response to arbitraryletters

Carriers can push out changes to network settings over the air whenever they choose to. On preconfigured iPhones, Apple only installs what the carriers provide them to install in terms of carrier network settings.

If you want to, you can just call most carriers from another phone and they can fully configure a new Phone over the air for you.

So no, this is still on Google to fix.

And unless someone here has used a Heicard, nobody here is likely to know what the risks, if any are of using any such hack SIM. Most people here just use their iPhones with the SIM or eSIM provided by their cellular service provider because that works just fine so nothing else is ever even considered.

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Answer 3

Nov 11, 2021 5:37 PM in response to Michael Black

Thanks for the quick reply.

Google Fi support has no real information beyond "5g doesn't currently work on iPhones" and sometimes "it is something we're looking into."

I was hoping perhaps the iPhone limits what a malicious sim card could do. For instance, I'm fairly sure a sim card cannot access data on an iPhone, or else that would defeat the point of device encryption, so I'm guessing app data is safe from a malicious sim card. If a malicious sim card can mostly just connect me to the wrong cell network, that is a risk I am am probably okay with to make 5G usable. But if it could also snoop on my SMS messages and covertly forward them to someone else, or monitor my location information and exfiltrate that... well, that would be more worrisome. But I just don't know what the iPhone allows a sim card to do, although it seems plausible one who better knows iPhones or the spec for the SIM card interfaces might. Hence my posting here.

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Answer 4

Nov 12, 2021 7:06 AM in response to arbitraryletters

5G works perfectly fine on my iPhone 13 Pro and AT&T’s 5G network. And there is nothing wrong with T-Mobile’s 5G network either, which is the physical network Google Fi uses. So I say their support response is pure bs.

For whatever reason, they apparently do not or cannot figure out how to push out proper network configurations for Apple 5G iPhones. Strange, since every other carrier seems to have figured it out long ago when the first Apple 5G iPhone 12 models came out a year ago.

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Answer 5

Nov 12, 2021 8:07 AM in response to Michael Black

I have T-Mobile, 5G works great on my iphones.

Google is slowly releasing network features on Google Fi to iPhone users.

They don't provide wifi calling, their custom VPN or 5G access.

Originally FI was Android only.

Can't imagine why they would want to cripple iphones on their network yet fully support Android devices.

No sir, can't think of a single reason 🤨

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Answer 6

Nov 12, 2021 8:35 AM in response to Michael Black

Apple controls the carrier bundles shipped with iOS. It works on the other networks fine because Apple includes the correct carrier bundle for those carriers in iOS. Details on the settings iOS specifices for different carriers, the actual bundle used by iOS when talking to Fi, and the specific settings that bundle incorrectly specifies so features like 5G do not work on Fi, are in the pages my original question linked to. It seems those links have since been removed by a moderator. But I am not interested in speculating on why Apple isn't including the correct carrier bundle for Fi in iOS, and if it is more Google's fault or Apple's, as we really don't know and one can imagine "strategic" reasons either of them might have decided to cause (or chose not to fix?) this problem.

This is a tangent from my original question, because figuring out which of the tech companies is more to blame for the lack of a correct carrier bundle for Fi in iOS isn't going to make 5G work for me. Understanding how secure the iPhone is from a possibly malicious SIM cards might, because then I might be able to just do the workaround.

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Answer 7

Nov 12, 2021 8:35 AM in response to arbitraryletters

Google Fi is an MVNO

They sell T-Mobile connectivity.

It's Google's responsibility to provide the necessary settings through the SIM card to access their "network".

No other MVNO has these issues.

It's definitely all on Google.

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Answer 8

Nov 12, 2021 9:12 AM in response to Johnathan Burger

Google cannot provide the necessary settings through the SIM card or "over the air". Some settings need to be changed in the carrier bundles that ship with iOS.

Look at an IOS restore image under "[systemImage]/System/Library/Carrier Bundles/iPhone" and see the settings iPhone ships for all the different carriers all around the world. For the other T-Mobile MVNO carriers where 5G works for there are bundles specific for them, which all enable features like 5G. There is not a file there Google Fi, so it falls back on the bundle called "TMobile_MVNO_US.bundle", which as you can see, does not enable features like 5G. I'm not going to speculate on why that is. I'm fairly sure none of us here know.

The SIM card (or eSIM) cannot selectively override settings in a carrier bundle. That is why the workaround involves altering the GID1 and ISMSI to make the iPhone selected a different carrier bundle which has the correct settings, rather than just fixing the wrong settings. But I don't think Google could just ship SIM cards with incorrect ISMI and GID1 numbers. It would defeat some carrier locking, pose a problem if that carrier bundle ever updated in an incompatible way with Fi, and presumably violate various agreements Google is bound to.

But really, I think this is all beside the point. I'm not involved with strategic power plays between tech companies. I'm just asking here how secure the iPhone is from malicious SIM cards so I can decide if I want to do the workaround.

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With the iPhone 13 on Google Fi, what are the risks to enabling 5G using a Heicard?

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