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That's if the only goal is "security". But we're talking about updates here. I don't think updates and user flexibility are mutually exclusive. If you do modif

by mtgx 10y ago

That's if the only goal is "security". But we're talking about updates here. I don't think updates and user flexibility are mutually exclusive. If you do modify your device in a way that it can't be guaranteed that the updates will secure the device anymore (which shouldn't be an issue for the vast majority of user modifications), then you simply lose that "warranty" for updates, or the company is no longer responsible to keep you up to date. But there are ways in which Google and OEMs can guarantee that for instance an OS image that's clean always resides on a locked-down partition, and that users can always "restore" their devices from that, no matter what other ROMs and whatnot they install on their devices and how many times they unlock the bootloader. The only exception to that may be people that tinker with the lock-down restoration partition as well, but for most custom ROM users that shouldn't be an issue. So this way 99.9% of the users can still be guaranteed updates, if they want them.

ultramancool 10y ago
> If you do modify your device in a way that it can't be guaranteed that the updates will secure the device anymore (which shouldn't be an issue for the vast majority of user modifications), then you simply lose that "warranty" for updates, or the company is no longer responsible to keep you up to date. I'm not saying that the updates must work on modified devices, I'm more saying that the incentive changes to preventing reverse engineering so that exploits don't happen and updates don't need to happen. Preventing that sort of user level modification, combined with heavy obfuscation and locked down firmwares does prevent reverse engineering by most amateurs and many professionals without a near-unlimited budget. If you can't read the executable for the IPC service, you can't reverse engineer it and you can't find exploits in it.

by mtgx 10y ago

ultramancool 10y ago

> If you do modify your device in a way that it can't be guaranteed that the updates will secure the device anymore (which shouldn't be an issue for the vast majority of user modifications), then you simply lose that "warranty" for updates, or the company is no longer responsible to keep you up to date. I'm not saying that the updates must work on modified devices, I'm more saying that the incentive changes to preventing reverse engineering so that exploits don't happen and updates don't need to happen. Preventing that sort of user level modification, combined with heavy obfuscation and locked down firmwares does prevent reverse engineering by most amateurs and many professionals without a near-unlimited budget. If you can't read the executable for the IPC service, you can't reverse engineer it and you can't find exploits in it.