17 ms·

CopperheadOS has imploded

289 points by nitrohorse 8y ago

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
It seems a little silly to me that someone would trust a "secure OS" from a situation where one guy could "seize control" of the company and infrastructure. This is largely why I've never seen third party ROMs as a significant solution to the security situation with mobile phones. That being said, I'm curious what the other side of this story is. The email makes it sound like the guy's being fired.
- strcat 8y ago
  > The email makes it sound like the guy's being fired. The person being 'fired' owns 50% of the company and is the CTO and sole developer of the products, with most of it written on their own time. There's no employment / copyright agreement in place with Copperhead.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - 18pfsmt 8y ago
    You seem like a good guy and principled person, but you should let folks know that you are the developer in question, no?
- nextos 8y ago
  I disagree, at least to some extent. CopperheadOS is open source. The scripts to build a ROM are open and it's possible to audit them. In fact, if you don't want to pay for COS you are free to build your own image using said scripts. I've done it. It's easy. I think the whole mistake CopperheadOS did was switching to a Creative Commons license that prevented commercial use by third parties. This has effectively made it tricky for Daniel Micay to continue his great work on CopperheadOS elsewhere once the company imploded. It's sad, because it's IMHO the very best ROM out there. I don't want to use anything else. I think they should have gone for a more sustainable business model. In his shoes, I'd restart COS by doing a crowdfunding round and aiming at a few other devices (which may not be hard now with device-agnostic ROMs made possible by Treble). COS has had a reduced target market since Google decided to price Pixel terminals much higher than Nexus. There are rumours that they might release a cheap Pixel to compete with iPhone SE. That might be good for COS.
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    > CopperheadOS is open source. Technically, it is. But, as you pointed out, the license they chose guarantees that it will essentially die out, specifically the bit prohibiting the non-commercial use of it. It's also mildly interesting that Daniel aggressively defended the creative commons license they chose, when challenged.
    - Fnoord 8y ago
      I don't understand this. What exactly is licensed under Creative Commons Non-Commercial? It is either open source, or it isn't. If it is open source (OSI approved), that doesn't prohibit non-commercial work. Because then it wouldn't be OSI approved. Right?
      - Dylan16807 8y ago
        You don't understand that people might use the words "open source" in a slightly different way than you do?
        Fnoord 8y ago
        It isn't "a different way than I do"; its different from both the defacto meaning of the term open source, and it isn't according to OSI. That makes calling such open source deceiving, just like calling shared source open source would be deceiving. Seen enough of that shit to stick to frameworks such as OSI-approved (which is more liberal than FSF or DFSG so it could be even more strict ie. we're being generous).
        Dylan16807 8y ago
        "shared source" doesn't let you use the code yourself. CC-NC gives you the exact same rights to use/modify/redistribute that you got the code under. The OSI approves licenses with various restrictions on them, such as displaying authorship, or reciprocation, or patent grants. I haven't seen any reason to categorize a noncommercial restriction as fundamentally different. The noncommercial clause is a huge issue because of how vague it is, but that's a different topic entirely. Also, using the OSI list as the ultimate reference isn't appropriate in the first place. They only approve licenses that are designed for software. I think almost everyone would agree that CC-BY and GFDL are open source licenses, despite them not being on that list.
- auslander 8y ago
  > "secure OS" from a situation where one guy ... Best comment. Security is a probability theory. You rate probabilities of factors and multiply them. Probability of one guy inserting backdoor is much higher than probability of inserted backdoor in iOS or Android, hence, you'd be better off with stock SW. And you'll be sticking out like bamboo tree in midwest, with your 'secure os'
  - horsawlarway 8y ago
    This is silly. Security is not so much probability theory as it is cost vs benefit. The probability of one guy inserting a backdoor is high, but the payoff for compromising his platform is incredibly low. The probability of compromising one of the big two - android/ios - may be low (keyword: may. It turns out large groups are also made up of lots of "one guy"s) but the payoff is huge.
    - auslander 8y ago
      > probability of compromising one of the big two - android/ios - may be low - payoff is huge. Whats your point? My point is that it takes nation state to do that.
      - esrauch 8y ago
        It takes a nation-state to do it and nation-states have an interest in doing so. Copperhead maybe could be comprised in the short term by just any thug with a led pipe making threats but those thugs have much softer targets than that so why would they?
    - auslander 8y ago
      > the payoff for compromising his platform is incredibly low True, but price of the compromise is low as well. Scratch that. All it takes is to hack this one guy, i can do that :)
  - acct1771 8y ago
    Visiting the HN website is pretty "sore thumb", I wouldn't skip a secure OS for that reason. We should just ALLL choose a secure OS!
- staticassertion 8y ago
  No one could seize control of the company, that's the point. The signing keys were wiped - compromise is now impossible through that avenue.
wpdev_63 8y ago
If the underlying hardware is compromised(it is) then it doesn't matter what the os does.\ EDIT: If you are downvoting me - state why.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  Depends on your threat model. Sure, it's impossible to keep out certain nation states, but a number of OS changes can keep malicious applications developed by less-skilled nation states or highly skilled individuals under control. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. Unless you are suggesting that we should just give up on security entirely because it's impossible to have a system that is 100% secure?
  - wpdev_63 8y ago
    Do people really need to worry about other than national states with android and ios? Exploits/Viruses in these OSes are extremely rare in comparison to the desktop OSes and they're just getting harder to exploit. It's gettting to the point where you need the resources of one of the cyber superpowers to exploit these OSes. Their permissions based security model is great and hopefully will make their way to desktop. My theory is that there is a backdoor into these OSes. It's the path of least resistance and there's precedence of this. Obviously Apple/Google are going to vehemently deny this as this and these backdoors would be able to provide the most precise form of surveillance ever created.
    - busterarm 8y ago
      There are relatively easy tutorials out there, some on freaking YouTube ffs, about how to connect to the JTAG pins on most Android phones and pull data right out of memory. These are barely above trivial attacks that don't require a nation state to pull off, just a talented engineer.
      - wpdev_63 8y ago
        I don't think most people care about physical access exploits. If you did you would have some specialized software which would remotely wipe it upon being tampering with. Common sense. What really matters security wise is who is this security for? If it's for state actors(vault7) then it's useless. It's known that copperheados doesn't do much to defend against them as the phones are exploited on a hardware level. All this extra security is pointless as the people you are most worried about, has access.
tdb7893 8y ago
So the tweet makes it sound like someone seized control but the email just makes it sound like this guy was just fired. I'm pretty confused
- pas 8y ago
  The "Company" guy has control over the domain/DNS, not the signing key(s). https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1006326315551789056 https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1006326315551789056
- gsnedders 8y ago
  They were the two co-founders of the company, and both still own 50% of the shares of the company, with Daniel having been the CTO and sole developer of its products.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - chris_wot 8y ago
    What does the other guy do then?
    - chaosite 8y ago
      Handle the "business side". From 30 minutes reading about this and no prior knowledge about the project or the people involved, this seems to be the probably wrong timeline: 1. Developer starts a project, hacks on it for a while. 2. Developer decides he'd like to get paid for hacking on project. 3. Enter guy. Developer and guy incorporate, with guy as CEO and director, developer as CTO and person who does all the coding. Ownership is 50-50, company assets and personal assets are a mess (domain name & DNS are on the CEO's personal card, copyright for the code CTO writes is not assigned to the company, CTO controls private keys, and some are his personal private keys from before the incorporation). 4. CEO & CTO have a falling out wrt company direction. 5. CTO takes this personally, as a betrayal, seeing the falling out as the destruction of the project he has built basically single-handedly at great personal sacrifice. 6. CTO destroys private keys, plans to sue over copyright. Project is now imploded.
craftyguy 8y ago
I figured it was only a matter of time. It's absurd to think you can run a company with a product like this, with only one full-time developer. RIP folks who bought devices from them, who will not longer be receiving updates.
Apocryphon 8y ago
Between CopperheadOS and CyanogenMod imploding, what's left? LineageOS and Replicant? Anything else?
- kjeetgill 8y ago
  I didn't hear about CyanogenMod imploding. What happened there?
  - detaro 8y ago
    Cyanogen Inc, the company founded to do commercial work on it and running a lot of the project infrastructure, ran out of money after some weird things like cancelling a licensing deal with OnePlus suddenly and closed. community part of the project rebranded to LineageOS
    - spindle 8y ago
      Right. The community part - which is still alive and well in its rebranded form as LineageOS - was doing the most important work anyway (or, even if that's a loaded statement, the community part was extremely productive and still is).
    - arrivance 8y ago
      > after some weird things like cancelling a licensing deal with OnePlus suddenly just to be specific, they licensed the exclusive right to the cyanogen name in india to micromax (while previously licensing the non-exclusive right to oneplus in all regions), who then got an injunction against oneplus selling their devices in india.
  - beenBoutIT 8y ago
    Factory images improved and then surpassed Cyanogenmod in a whole bunch of ways.
    - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
      Still no universal way to revoke fine grained permissions from apps in factory Android.
nitrohorse 8y ago
Reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8qdnn3/goodbye/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8qdnn3/goodby...
nitrohorse 8y ago
"I already prevented any possible compromise of the OS. I am not capable of compromising it anymore so no form of coercion can make me do that. It's very unfortunate that things ended this way and now I guess the little money I earned from this will go to legal fees, etc." - Daniel Micay https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1006331205682384896 https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1006331205682384896 Apparently he's deleted the signing keys. https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1006334186725224448 https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1006334186725224448
- erhardm 8y ago
  I'm wondering if destroying the signing keys will have legal consequences. Are signing keys considered company IP when their identity is "fused" with the main developer? Reading online posts it seems that the community is trusting the developer, not the company behind him.
  - toyg 8y ago
    If those keys were generated before the company existed, and there is no explicit assignment, then they clearly belonged to him. If they were generated later, it gets very hairy. Were they created with company resources? On company time? Is there a record of this happening? Etc etc. Going to court would be a huge waste of money for all parties involved, at this point.
    - erhardm 8y ago
      But if those keys represent Person A at Company X then who owns them? Can the company use them if they don't represent the truth anymore? Who's responsibility is it to guard/change/dispose them?
    - earenndil 8y ago
      His twitter says he originally generated them in 2009-2010 to submit packages to the aur. So he's probably in the clear.
FreakLegion 8y ago
Context from when this showed up last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17239259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17239259 The CEO, _jayy, posted a number of comments, then deleted all but one. The deleted comments were preserved by yegortimoshenko. Links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17241694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17241694
- serf 8y ago
  "the manager", personified. Sheesh. "Code doesn't sell itself" is almost managerial/ceo self-parody -- especially when it's a two-person show (not to mention the score of successful open/open-ish projects that totally and utterly lack a marketer/salesman.) I think he meant "Code doesn't skim its' own profit."
  - arcturus17 8y ago
    There are plenty of skilled and honest managers in tech, so I fail to see how this is "the manager" personified. The engineer recognizes that with a competent manager things would be in a better place - nowhere does he say that the manager as a figure is redundant, quite the opposite in fact. If anything this is "founder failure" personified, which is why VCs are absolutely obsessed with founder chemistry.
    - dzamo_norton 8y ago
      He or she is saying that he's a personification of the well-known and sometimes-accurate manager cliché that engineers love to hate. Think pointy-haired boss in Dilbert. It's become an abstraction that people use for conversing, including for laughing, so it doesn't go away when you say "I know many contemporary counterexamples".
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- axlprose 8y ago
  There's even more context about how this CEO managed the business in a reddit thread in response to those tweets as well, which includes some detailed and revealing comments from the developer: https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8oq1l3/cos_future_questions_and_concerns_from_a_customer/e06a4cr https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8oq1l3/cos_fu... https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8oq1l3/cos_future_questions_and_concerns_from_a_customer/e0drnyv https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8oq1l3/cos_fu...
johnnyOnTheSpot 8y ago
Another Theo
- auslander 8y ago
  I love Theo, no compromises. Theo Victor! :)
beenBoutIT 8y ago
Does anyone have any idea how many devices run CopperheadOS? The market has to be extremely tiny. How many people are capable of manually flashing an image onto a Nexus/Pixel, and then what subset of that group is interested in a "more secure" ROM?
- bubblethink 8y ago
  >How many people are capable of manually flashing an image onto a Nexus/Pixel, and then what subset of that group is interested in a "more secure" ROM? It's mostly their commercial clients. Very few regular people can use COS for recent devices (for free) since you need to build it from source.
  - garyfirestorm 8y ago
    It's not that hard. I'm a mechanical engineer who happens to care about privacy. I was able to build it by following a guide. There are many tutorials if you search. I don't have any degrees in computer science or IT, if I could build it I would guess anyone could.
    - bubblethink 8y ago
      Yeah, it's not hard. The steps are pretty well documented. It's just not very practical. You need to do it every month and flash manually. You lose the OTA mechanism unless you also set up an update server and hack on the code to point to your update server. I don't know how well that stuff is documented. In any case, all this is extremely niche. You need a good HPC like system to have reasonable build times. Note that you are also building chromium in addition to the ROM. The parent's point was about user numbers, and I am pretty sure that that's minuscule outside of their paid users.
      - craftyguy 8y ago
        Well, you can't do any of that if there's even a hint of commercial use because of the CC BY-NC-SA license they (CopperheadOS) used. So you can basically only build it for yourself.
cbHXBY1D 8y ago
What a shame. I used to hang out on Rust IRC when Daniel was still engaged with the project. He always seemed so knowledgeable and he fought for what he thought was best for the language.
signa11 8y ago
fwiw, the screen-shot: https://paste.xinu.at/QIWIC7/ https://paste.xinu.at/QIWIC7/
- mar77i 8y ago
  On the upside, the damage that's there remains in plain sight thanks to the guy who made the opposite of the last paragraph happen.
yolo1897 8y ago
damn i was about to buy a phone compatible with it...
- auslander 8y ago
  what was the price of yours vs iPhone 7?
bitL 8y ago
Note to technical cofounders - always keep 51%.
- vectorEQ 8y ago
  haha aye. people will give grief at some point especially if money is involved. always have some ensurance it can't go completely out of hand...
- Fnoord 8y ago
  That's an option, but not necessarily the sole one. This problem isn't new. I'd say its one of the primary reasons why a general partnership is a legal entity, or a good choice in this case [1]. It'd level the playing field between both partners, creating a mutual interest from an authority higher than themselves (ultimately, the government). I'm not saying it is without problems though (imagine one of the partners becomes terminally ill). Another option would've been to call it earlier, before burn-out, when it turned out there was no market for this. If people don't wanna pay or donate for the product, there's no demand apparently. No need to work for a minimum wage. Get a regular job, and use your leisure time as you see fit (for EXAMPLE on a project like this but without pressure or obligation). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_partnership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_partnership
  - mindslight 8y ago
    The fundamental tension of "unprofitability" was there from the very start, as real security is directly at odds with traditional business models. The goal of the businessman is to become a middleman, but security precludes having a man-in-the-middle! Which is why these projects overwhelmingly flame out. The engineer figures there can't be much harm from a business type trying to design a business around their project, as they assume the project philosophy will remain unaffected. Meanwhile the business type is excited about having a new in-demand raw material to which they can add inefficiency to derive a revenue stream. The engineer figures they own the code, so whatever games the business monkey plays, they can only end up back in the same spot. Meanwhile the business type is busy conjuring and documenting bureaucracy like corporate structure and implicit contracts with which to seize power over the raw resource (the project) if the coder doesn't submit to his "real world" supervision. It's likely that the engineer could prevail and end up owning the code, but only after an expensive and draining legal battle - it's simply easier to move on to productive non-zero-sum things. Meanwhile the business type is all too willing to fight said battle, as investing real money into paperwork games was basically their entire operation all along. IMHO the real shame in this case was licensing the code base something other than GPL. GPL would have made continued use unambiguous even in the presence of ambiguous ownership.
auslander 8y ago
iOS is better :)
- auslander 8y ago
  I was a techie, thinking Android is open source and I get SD slot. Busted big time. Android is Google's child, tied to its services, like Chrome, phoning home on every step. iOS is years ahead in security and privacy. Read its whitepapers, read forensics blogs - they're all about iOS, mentioning Android in the passing, as too easy to be a blog post - blog.elcomsoft.com
surrealize 8y ago
Not a huge surprise if you followed rust a few years back: http://slash-r-slash-rust.github.io/archived/2u1dme.html http://slash-r-slash-rust.github.io/archived/2u1dme.html
- Sean1708 8y ago
  Sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but what does Rust have to do with CopperheadOS?
  - Operyl 8y ago
    They're pointing to the disagreement between Rust developers and strncat (the CTO of COS, and an influential contributor to Rust).
    - Sean1708 8y ago
      Ah ok, so I'm guessing that strcat is Daniel Micay then? That wasn't obvious to me (I initially thought that Mozilla might have been funding CopperheadOS or something).
      - Operyl 8y ago
        Yep, Daniel Micay == strncat.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  didn't know Graydon Hoare left rust o_o ps: the archived date confused me, just in case, this is a 3yo thread https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/2u1dme/daniel_micay/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/2u1dme/daniel_micay/ (enjoy the art)
  - DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
    yikes, what happened here?
ddtaylor 8y ago
Is it possible for them to fork under a new name? I ask because it depends on how they have structured the copyright of their code and open source licensing. I don't see any other simple solution besides forking and creating a new entity he owns 100% of.
- esrauch 8y ago
  The code is available under non-commercial licensing. It sounds like ownership beyond that is going to be sketchy enough that no other licensing is likely safe to assume under any condition short of a definitive resolution in court or another company buying out both partners.
- ReverseCold 8y ago
  I asked strncat, he said it's not possible even if provided a substantial amount of funding. (Something about having to rewrite tools or something like that.)
Fnoord 8y ago
Ultimately, who cares who's morally right or wrong? Lets skip the drama and try to see the legal angle, with the goal of figuring out a way to "save" the source code (of possible). The way I see it (with my limited legal knowledge, IANAL) is that Daniel Micay got paid for his services, and therefore the copyright is assigned to the company behind CopperheadOS. I'm not sure if Daniel can be fired, that'd depend on the legal entity of CopperheadOS (for example, in a general partnership both partners bear responsibility and liability which levels the playing field). I tried looking it up on the homepage, but I've been unable to figure that out. What is the legal entity behind the company "Copperhead Security"? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_partnership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_partnership
- itake 8y ago
  Also IANAL, As a SWE, all of my employment contracts explicitly state that code that I wrote for the company is owned by the company. Just because he was paid for services does not mean that the company owns the copyright of the code he wrote.
  - thekaleb 8y ago
    If I pay a photographer for services, the photographer owns the copyright unless we agree otherwise in a contract. If there is no agreement, the creator owns the work.
    - ajdlinux 8y ago
      My (very limited) understanding is that the rule about works for hire only applies to non-employee contractors under certain tightly defined circumstances. Actually employing a photographer as an employee would mean you own the copyright, paying the photographer as a contractor would not.
      - gm-conspiracy 8y ago
        Correct.
auslander 8y ago
i'm a liar, eat it :) youtube.com/watch?v=awY1MRlMKMc
cmurf 8y ago
His employment is suspended with pay, stipulating signing an employee agreement? OK so you're suspended, and we will pay you only if you sign this agreement that any ethical company would have had you sign at the start of employment. This sort of duress after the fact is unethical and possibly illegal. And the demand for control of a personal GPG key predating employment is eyebrow raising and properly should invite ridicule.
eleitl 8y ago
Reddit suspended strncat's account: https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8r9su6/reddit_suspended_strncats_account/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8r9su6/reddit...

289 points by nitrohorse 8y ago

It seems a little silly to me that someone would trust a "secure OS" from a situation where one guy could "seize control" of the company and infrastructure. This is largely why I've never seen third party ROMs as a significant solution to the security situation with mobile phones. That being said, I'm curious what the other side of this story is. The email makes it sound like the guy's being fired.

strcat 8y ago
> The email makes it sound like the guy's being fired. The person being 'fired' owns 50% of the company and is the CTO and sole developer of the products, with most of it written on their own time. There's no employment / copyright agreement in place with Copperhead.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- 18pfsmt 8y ago
  You seem like a good guy and principled person, but you should let folks know that you are the developer in question, no?
nextos 8y ago
I disagree, at least to some extent. CopperheadOS is open source. The scripts to build a ROM are open and it's possible to audit them. In fact, if you don't want to pay for COS you are free to build your own image using said scripts. I've done it. It's easy. I think the whole mistake CopperheadOS did was switching to a Creative Commons license that prevented commercial use by third parties. This has effectively made it tricky for Daniel Micay to continue his great work on CopperheadOS elsewhere once the company imploded. It's sad, because it's IMHO the very best ROM out there. I don't want to use anything else. I think they should have gone for a more sustainable business model. In his shoes, I'd restart COS by doing a crowdfunding round and aiming at a few other devices (which may not be hard now with device-agnostic ROMs made possible by Treble). COS has had a reduced target market since Google decided to price Pixel terminals much higher than Nexus. There are rumours that they might release a cheap Pixel to compete with iPhone SE. That might be good for COS.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  > CopperheadOS is open source. Technically, it is. But, as you pointed out, the license they chose guarantees that it will essentially die out, specifically the bit prohibiting the non-commercial use of it. It's also mildly interesting that Daniel aggressively defended the creative commons license they chose, when challenged.
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    I don't understand this. What exactly is licensed under Creative Commons Non-Commercial? It is either open source, or it isn't. If it is open source (OSI approved), that doesn't prohibit non-commercial work. Because then it wouldn't be OSI approved. Right?
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      You don't understand that people might use the words "open source" in a slightly different way than you do?
      - Fnoord 8y ago
        It isn't "a different way than I do"; its different from both the defacto meaning of the term open source, and it isn't according to OSI. That makes calling such open source deceiving, just like calling shared source open source would be deceiving. Seen enough of that shit to stick to frameworks such as OSI-approved (which is more liberal than FSF or DFSG so it could be even more strict ie. we're being generous).
        Dylan16807 8y ago
        "shared source" doesn't let you use the code yourself. CC-NC gives you the exact same rights to use/modify/redistribute that you got the code under. The OSI approves licenses with various restrictions on them, such as displaying authorship, or reciprocation, or patent grants. I haven't seen any reason to categorize a noncommercial restriction as fundamentally different. The noncommercial clause is a huge issue because of how vague it is, but that's a different topic entirely. Also, using the OSI list as the ultimate reference isn't appropriate in the first place. They only approve licenses that are designed for software. I think almost everyone would agree that CC-BY and GFDL are open source licenses, despite them not being on that list.
auslander 8y ago
> "secure OS" from a situation where one guy ... Best comment. Security is a probability theory. You rate probabilities of factors and multiply them. Probability of one guy inserting backdoor is much higher than probability of inserted backdoor in iOS or Android, hence, you'd be better off with stock SW. And you'll be sticking out like bamboo tree in midwest, with your 'secure os'
- horsawlarway 8y ago
  This is silly. Security is not so much probability theory as it is cost vs benefit. The probability of one guy inserting a backdoor is high, but the payoff for compromising his platform is incredibly low. The probability of compromising one of the big two - android/ios - may be low (keyword: may. It turns out large groups are also made up of lots of "one guy"s) but the payoff is huge.
  - auslander 8y ago
    > probability of compromising one of the big two - android/ios - may be low - payoff is huge. Whats your point? My point is that it takes nation state to do that.
    - esrauch 8y ago
      It takes a nation-state to do it and nation-states have an interest in doing so. Copperhead maybe could be comprised in the short term by just any thug with a led pipe making threats but those thugs have much softer targets than that so why would they?
  - auslander 8y ago
    > the payoff for compromising his platform is incredibly low True, but price of the compromise is low as well. Scratch that. All it takes is to hack this one guy, i can do that :)
- acct1771 8y ago
  Visiting the HN website is pretty "sore thumb", I wouldn't skip a secure OS for that reason. We should just ALLL choose a secure OS!
staticassertion 8y ago
No one could seize control of the company, that's the point. The signing keys were wiped - compromise is now impossible through that avenue.

wpdev_63 8y ago

If the underlying hardware is compromised(it is) then it doesn't matter what the os does.\ EDIT: If you are downvoting me - state why.

craftyguy 8y ago
Depends on your threat model. Sure, it's impossible to keep out certain nation states, but a number of OS changes can keep malicious applications developed by less-skilled nation states or highly skilled individuals under control. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. Unless you are suggesting that we should just give up on security entirely because it's impossible to have a system that is 100% secure?
- wpdev_63 8y ago
  Do people really need to worry about other than national states with android and ios? Exploits/Viruses in these OSes are extremely rare in comparison to the desktop OSes and they're just getting harder to exploit. It's gettting to the point where you need the resources of one of the cyber superpowers to exploit these OSes. Their permissions based security model is great and hopefully will make their way to desktop. My theory is that there is a backdoor into these OSes. It's the path of least resistance and there's precedence of this. Obviously Apple/Google are going to vehemently deny this as this and these backdoors would be able to provide the most precise form of surveillance ever created.
  - busterarm 8y ago
    There are relatively easy tutorials out there, some on freaking YouTube ffs, about how to connect to the JTAG pins on most Android phones and pull data right out of memory. These are barely above trivial attacks that don't require a nation state to pull off, just a talented engineer.
    - wpdev_63 8y ago
      I don't think most people care about physical access exploits. If you did you would have some specialized software which would remotely wipe it upon being tampering with. Common sense. What really matters security wise is who is this security for? If it's for state actors(vault7) then it's useless. It's known that copperheados doesn't do much to defend against them as the phones are exploited on a hardware level. All this extra security is pointless as the people you are most worried about, has access.

tdb7893 8y ago

So the tweet makes it sound like someone seized control but the email just makes it sound like this guy was just fired. I'm pretty confused

pas 8y ago
The "Company" guy has control over the domain/DNS, not the signing key(s). https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1006326315551789056 https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1006326315551789056
gsnedders 8y ago
They were the two co-founders of the company, and both still own 50% of the shares of the company, with Daniel having been the CTO and sole developer of its products.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- chris_wot 8y ago
  What does the other guy do then?
  - chaosite 8y ago
    Handle the "business side". From 30 minutes reading about this and no prior knowledge about the project or the people involved, this seems to be the probably wrong timeline: 1. Developer starts a project, hacks on it for a while. 2. Developer decides he'd like to get paid for hacking on project. 3. Enter guy. Developer and guy incorporate, with guy as CEO and director, developer as CTO and person who does all the coding. Ownership is 50-50, company assets and personal assets are a mess (domain name & DNS are on the CEO's personal card, copyright for the code CTO writes is not assigned to the company, CTO controls private keys, and some are his personal private keys from before the incorporation). 4. CEO & CTO have a falling out wrt company direction. 5. CTO takes this personally, as a betrayal, seeing the falling out as the destruction of the project he has built basically single-handedly at great personal sacrifice. 6. CTO destroys private keys, plans to sue over copyright. Project is now imploded.

craftyguy 8y ago

I figured it was only a matter of time. It's absurd to think you can run a company with a product like this, with only one full-time developer. RIP folks who bought devices from them, who will not longer be receiving updates.

Apocryphon 8y ago

Between CopperheadOS and CyanogenMod imploding, what's left? LineageOS and Replicant? Anything else?

kjeetgill 8y ago
I didn't hear about CyanogenMod imploding. What happened there?
- detaro 8y ago
  Cyanogen Inc, the company founded to do commercial work on it and running a lot of the project infrastructure, ran out of money after some weird things like cancelling a licensing deal with OnePlus suddenly and closed. community part of the project rebranded to LineageOS
  - spindle 8y ago
    Right. The community part - which is still alive and well in its rebranded form as LineageOS - was doing the most important work anyway (or, even if that's a loaded statement, the community part was extremely productive and still is).
  - arrivance 8y ago
    > after some weird things like cancelling a licensing deal with OnePlus suddenly just to be specific, they licensed the exclusive right to the cyanogen name in india to micromax (while previously licensing the non-exclusive right to oneplus in all regions), who then got an injunction against oneplus selling their devices in india.
- beenBoutIT 8y ago
  Factory images improved and then surpassed Cyanogenmod in a whole bunch of ways.
  - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
    Still no universal way to revoke fine grained permissions from apps in factory Android.

nitrohorse 8y ago

Reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8qdnn3/goodbye/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8qdnn3/goodby...

nitrohorse 8y ago

"I already prevented any possible compromise of the OS. I am not capable of compromising it anymore so no form of coercion can make me do that. It's very unfortunate that things ended this way and now I guess the little money I earned from this will go to legal fees, etc." - Daniel Micay https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1006331205682384896 https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1006331205682384896 Apparently he's deleted the signing keys. https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1006334186725224448 https://twitter.com/DanielMicay/status/1006334186725224448

erhardm 8y ago
I'm wondering if destroying the signing keys will have legal consequences. Are signing keys considered company IP when their identity is "fused" with the main developer? Reading online posts it seems that the community is trusting the developer, not the company behind him.
- toyg 8y ago
  If those keys were generated before the company existed, and there is no explicit assignment, then they clearly belonged to him. If they were generated later, it gets very hairy. Were they created with company resources? On company time? Is there a record of this happening? Etc etc. Going to court would be a huge waste of money for all parties involved, at this point.
  - erhardm 8y ago
    But if those keys represent Person A at Company X then who owns them? Can the company use them if they don't represent the truth anymore? Who's responsibility is it to guard/change/dispose them?
  - earenndil 8y ago
    His twitter says he originally generated them in 2009-2010 to submit packages to the aur. So he's probably in the clear.

FreakLegion 8y ago

Context from when this showed up last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17239259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17239259 The CEO, _jayy, posted a number of comments, then deleted all but one. The deleted comments were preserved by yegortimoshenko. Links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17241694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17241694

serf 8y ago
"the manager", personified. Sheesh. "Code doesn't sell itself" is almost managerial/ceo self-parody -- especially when it's a two-person show (not to mention the score of successful open/open-ish projects that totally and utterly lack a marketer/salesman.) I think he meant "Code doesn't skim its' own profit."
- arcturus17 8y ago
  There are plenty of skilled and honest managers in tech, so I fail to see how this is "the manager" personified. The engineer recognizes that with a competent manager things would be in a better place - nowhere does he say that the manager as a figure is redundant, quite the opposite in fact. If anything this is "founder failure" personified, which is why VCs are absolutely obsessed with founder chemistry.
  - dzamo_norton 8y ago
    He or she is saying that he's a personification of the well-known and sometimes-accurate manager cliché that engineers love to hate. Think pointy-haired boss in Dilbert. It's become an abstraction that people use for conversing, including for laughing, so it doesn't go away when you say "I know many contemporary counterexamples".
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
axlprose 8y ago
There's even more context about how this CEO managed the business in a reddit thread in response to those tweets as well, which includes some detailed and revealing comments from the developer: https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8oq1l3/cos_future_questions_and_concerns_from_a_customer/e06a4cr https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8oq1l3/cos_fu... https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8oq1l3/cos_future_questions_and_concerns_from_a_customer/e0drnyv https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8oq1l3/cos_fu...

johnnyOnTheSpot 8y ago

Another Theo

auslander 8y ago
I love Theo, no compromises. Theo Victor! :)

beenBoutIT 8y ago

Does anyone have any idea how many devices run CopperheadOS? The market has to be extremely tiny. How many people are capable of manually flashing an image onto a Nexus/Pixel, and then what subset of that group is interested in a "more secure" ROM?

bubblethink 8y ago
>How many people are capable of manually flashing an image onto a Nexus/Pixel, and then what subset of that group is interested in a "more secure" ROM? It's mostly their commercial clients. Very few regular people can use COS for recent devices (for free) since you need to build it from source.
- garyfirestorm 8y ago
  It's not that hard. I'm a mechanical engineer who happens to care about privacy. I was able to build it by following a guide. There are many tutorials if you search. I don't have any degrees in computer science or IT, if I could build it I would guess anyone could.
  - bubblethink 8y ago
    Yeah, it's not hard. The steps are pretty well documented. It's just not very practical. You need to do it every month and flash manually. You lose the OTA mechanism unless you also set up an update server and hack on the code to point to your update server. I don't know how well that stuff is documented. In any case, all this is extremely niche. You need a good HPC like system to have reasonable build times. Note that you are also building chromium in addition to the ROM. The parent's point was about user numbers, and I am pretty sure that that's minuscule outside of their paid users.
    - craftyguy 8y ago
      Well, you can't do any of that if there's even a hint of commercial use because of the CC BY-NC-SA license they (CopperheadOS) used. So you can basically only build it for yourself.

cbHXBY1D 8y ago

What a shame. I used to hang out on Rust IRC when Daniel was still engaged with the project. He always seemed so knowledgeable and he fought for what he thought was best for the language.

signa11 8y ago

fwiw, the screen-shot: https://paste.xinu.at/QIWIC7/ https://paste.xinu.at/QIWIC7/

mar77i 8y ago
On the upside, the damage that's there remains in plain sight thanks to the guy who made the opposite of the last paragraph happen.

yolo1897 8y ago

damn i was about to buy a phone compatible with it...

auslander 8y ago
what was the price of yours vs iPhone 7?

bitL 8y ago

Note to technical cofounders - always keep 51%.

vectorEQ 8y ago
haha aye. people will give grief at some point especially if money is involved. always have some ensurance it can't go completely out of hand...
Fnoord 8y ago
That's an option, but not necessarily the sole one. This problem isn't new. I'd say its one of the primary reasons why a general partnership is a legal entity, or a good choice in this case [1]. It'd level the playing field between both partners, creating a mutual interest from an authority higher than themselves (ultimately, the government). I'm not saying it is without problems though (imagine one of the partners becomes terminally ill). Another option would've been to call it earlier, before burn-out, when it turned out there was no market for this. If people don't wanna pay or donate for the product, there's no demand apparently. No need to work for a minimum wage. Get a regular job, and use your leisure time as you see fit (for EXAMPLE on a project like this but without pressure or obligation). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_partnership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_partnership
- mindslight 8y ago
  The fundamental tension of "unprofitability" was there from the very start, as real security is directly at odds with traditional business models. The goal of the businessman is to become a middleman, but security precludes having a man-in-the-middle! Which is why these projects overwhelmingly flame out. The engineer figures there can't be much harm from a business type trying to design a business around their project, as they assume the project philosophy will remain unaffected. Meanwhile the business type is excited about having a new in-demand raw material to which they can add inefficiency to derive a revenue stream. The engineer figures they own the code, so whatever games the business monkey plays, they can only end up back in the same spot. Meanwhile the business type is busy conjuring and documenting bureaucracy like corporate structure and implicit contracts with which to seize power over the raw resource (the project) if the coder doesn't submit to his "real world" supervision. It's likely that the engineer could prevail and end up owning the code, but only after an expensive and draining legal battle - it's simply easier to move on to productive non-zero-sum things. Meanwhile the business type is all too willing to fight said battle, as investing real money into paperwork games was basically their entire operation all along. IMHO the real shame in this case was licensing the code base something other than GPL. GPL would have made continued use unambiguous even in the presence of ambiguous ownership.

auslander 8y ago

iOS is better :)

auslander 8y ago
I was a techie, thinking Android is open source and I get SD slot. Busted big time. Android is Google's child, tied to its services, like Chrome, phoning home on every step. iOS is years ahead in security and privacy. Read its whitepapers, read forensics blogs - they're all about iOS, mentioning Android in the passing, as too easy to be a blog post - blog.elcomsoft.com

surrealize 8y ago

Not a huge surprise if you followed rust a few years back: http://slash-r-slash-rust.github.io/archived/2u1dme.html http://slash-r-slash-rust.github.io/archived/2u1dme.html

Sean1708 8y ago
Sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but what does Rust have to do with CopperheadOS?
- Operyl 8y ago
  They're pointing to the disagreement between Rust developers and strncat (the CTO of COS, and an influential contributor to Rust).
  - Sean1708 8y ago
    Ah ok, so I'm guessing that strcat is Daniel Micay then? That wasn't obvious to me (I initially thought that Mozilla might have been funding CopperheadOS or something).
    - Operyl 8y ago
      Yep, Daniel Micay == strncat.
agumonkey 8y ago
didn't know Graydon Hoare left rust o_o ps: the archived date confused me, just in case, this is a 3yo thread https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/2u1dme/daniel_micay/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/2u1dme/daniel_micay/ (enjoy the art)
- DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
  yikes, what happened here?

ddtaylor 8y ago

Is it possible for them to fork under a new name? I ask because it depends on how they have structured the copyright of their code and open source licensing. I don't see any other simple solution besides forking and creating a new entity he owns 100% of.

esrauch 8y ago
The code is available under non-commercial licensing. It sounds like ownership beyond that is going to be sketchy enough that no other licensing is likely safe to assume under any condition short of a definitive resolution in court or another company buying out both partners.
ReverseCold 8y ago
I asked strncat, he said it's not possible even if provided a substantial amount of funding. (Something about having to rewrite tools or something like that.)

Fnoord 8y ago

Ultimately, who cares who's morally right or wrong? Lets skip the drama and try to see the legal angle, with the goal of figuring out a way to "save" the source code (of possible). The way I see it (with my limited legal knowledge, IANAL) is that Daniel Micay got paid for his services, and therefore the copyright is assigned to the company behind CopperheadOS. I'm not sure if Daniel can be fired, that'd depend on the legal entity of CopperheadOS (for example, in a general partnership both partners bear responsibility and liability which levels the playing field). I tried looking it up on the homepage, but I've been unable to figure that out. What is the legal entity behind the company "Copperhead Security"? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_partnership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_partnership

itake 8y ago
Also IANAL, As a SWE, all of my employment contracts explicitly state that code that I wrote for the company is owned by the company. Just because he was paid for services does not mean that the company owns the copyright of the code he wrote.
- thekaleb 8y ago
  If I pay a photographer for services, the photographer owns the copyright unless we agree otherwise in a contract. If there is no agreement, the creator owns the work.
  - ajdlinux 8y ago
    My (very limited) understanding is that the rule about works for hire only applies to non-employee contractors under certain tightly defined circumstances. Actually employing a photographer as an employee would mean you own the copyright, paying the photographer as a contractor would not.
    - gm-conspiracy 8y ago
      Correct.

auslander 8y ago

i'm a liar, eat it :) youtube.com/watch?v=awY1MRlMKMc

cmurf 8y ago

His employment is suspended with pay, stipulating signing an employee agreement? OK so you're suspended, and we will pay you only if you sign this agreement that any ethical company would have had you sign at the start of employment. This sort of duress after the fact is unethical and possibly illegal. And the demand for control of a personal GPG key predating employment is eyebrow raising and properly should invite ridicule.

eleitl 8y ago

Reddit suspended strncat's account: https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8r9su6/reddit_suspended_strncats_account/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8r9su6/reddit...