5 ms·

Any system where you don't have root access in insecure by it's very definition. Android and ios are hilarious.

nickburns 3y ago
a point as salient as it is germane. this is exactly why open-source software and hardware mobile device projects[0] will only continue to proliferate. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro
- autoexec 3y ago
  As much as I want to support those kinds of devices they're all insanely priced and have earned a reputation for failing at the most basic tasks. Maybe after it's been more than 3-5 years since the last forum post titled "can make/receive calls" I'll give pine phones another look.
  - nickburns 3y ago
    i agree the whole concept is not too far past proof at present.
fifteen1506 3y ago
Most are happy to outsource root to the OS manufacturer. And while I demand having root on Desktop, I don't see it happening on mobile for the majority.
- autoexec 3y ago
  Most phone users are oblivious to what root even is and yet still hate it when changes are pushed to their devices without notice, with no ability to revert to how things were or prevent unwanted changes in the future. This isn't acceptance but rather learned helplessness.
  - Eji1700 3y ago
    Most users click on every single download link and install shit they shouldn't touch. The simple problem has always been that when you're selling someone a $1000 piece of hardware that's supposed to "just work" how much do you let their ignorance fuck it all up. Now granted that's not an argument for locking away access from those who choose to accept the responsibility, as has always been the case, but the idea that there was any other outcome was absurd. Yes it'd be nice if everyone had some tech savvy common sense, but even now when we have generations growing up with it, actual understanding is far and few between when looking at the general population. People don't care, and don't want to, and it can make things risky.
    - lyu07282 3y ago
      Well people are technological illiterates for the most part, but the mobile platforms are dumbed down to such a degree that it would be impossible for people to learn even if they grew up with it. It's a vicious cycle, you have to design these mobile platforms for infants because that's the only way you can keep them safe, but they will never learn anything about computer or network technology using something designed to infantilize them. The thing is, it's not that I particularly care about people, but it's made Android/iOS incredibly irritating to use, I avoid it as much as I can. It's not just that it wants to protect me from myself, as much as it doesn't let me do what I want to do, it feels like computing with a straightjacket on. Build a fort knox of sandboxes and SELinux, that's fantastic, as long as you give me the keys and blueprints, and for christ sake, stop pretending that my phone isn't a computer.
chuckadams 3y ago
Any system that has a concept of root access is insecure by definition. See, I can do silly categorical statements too.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  Now you can try making true ones.
- nickburns 3y ago
  categorical ≠ silly ...unless you care to elaborate on why you disagree with this statement in substance and/or on point?
  - eganist 3y ago
    > categorical ≠ silly In the sentence "See, I can do silly categorical statements too," the adjectives "silly" and "categorical" both modify the noun "statements" and are not themselves related to one another. That's why OP used both of them. If the two words were synonymous, only one would be required. It's fun nitpicking nitpicks.
    - nickburns 3y ago
      adjectives modify nouns. sure is.
    - nickburns 3y ago
      i see your careful edit. (i ran out of time myself.) they're called parts of speech. your comment makes much more sense now. welcome.
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        Hi please stop
        nickburns 3y ago
ragnese 3y ago
I remember being chastised in some Android subreddits years ago for going against the (probably astroturf) opinion that having root access was "insecure". Sigh...
autoexec 3y ago
It'd be hilarious if phones hadn't largely replaced desktops/laptops for most people. I feel bad for all the kids who grew up/will grow up with nothing but a device primarily designed for media consumption and the collection of their private data for a computer.
- whoomp12342 3y ago
  they will never know the raw power of x86/x64 architecture and are limited to the mere throughput of an arm processor.
  - YoshiRulz 3y ago
    ISA doesn't determine speed (and not every workload is CPU-bound). In fact ARM, being RISC, would probably outperform x86 if you looked at a hardware+software stack that wasn't tuned for battery life above all else like Android is. For example, Apple Silicon Macs and Microsoft's upcoming Snapdragon laptops.
    - whoomp12342 3y ago
      I never said speed. I said power, as in voltage
switch007 3y ago
The grapheneos devs are really, really against root. What are your thoughts on that?
- commoner 3y ago
  Anyone who prefers root access on Android with a locked bootloader (on the OSes that support it) can use avbroot: https://github.com/chenxiaolong/avbroot https://github.com/chenxiaolong/avbroot Works great with CalyxOS and GrapheneOS.
  - sureglymop 3y ago
    What about OTA updates? Do they preserve it?
    - strcat 3y ago
      No, it's not compatible with receiving official over-the-air updates. Similarly to if you build and signed the OS properly, you'll need to make each of the updates yourself. Unlike building and signing the OS properly, you will not have the basic security model intact but rather will be massively rolling back security and trusting a huge portion of the OS with root access. Giving root to a massive portion of the OS destroys the fine grained access control and isolation model used throughout the OS. It makes exploitation much easier to do and much easier to hide. It also makes persistence a given since persistent root access can be given out which means an attacker doesn't need any verified boot bypass anymore. It's odd to go through all this effort to continue signing the OS for verified boot while losing the main verified boot security model which makes it useful. If you want root access, build and sign userdebug builds with ro.adb.secure=1, which is officially supported by GrapheneOS and only exposes root access via ADB which you should only use from the computer where you're building the OS. It would be possible to add some kind of key combination at boot to disable loading user installed applications, etc. and instead making a terminal with root access available. Not clear how that's really useful though. Instead, what these projects are doing is giving out root access to a massive portion of the OS in order to be able to give out full root access to apps. This is used as a shortcut to implement features in a way that massively reduces security even if you never use it. Implementing those features properly integrated into the OS following the principle of least privilege is the proper approach. Most of the features people believe they need this hack to achieve are doable without it, such as filtering traffic with your own firewall rules while also using a VPN which is a standard Android feature available to apps.
whoomp12342 3y ago
Any system exposed to the public internet is insecure by its very definition.
AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
Root is complicated, I would refactor that to "Any system where you don't have access to the bootloader signing keys is insecure". If you can't run your own code on the device, you can't really trust it.
sneak 3y ago
Then tons of my most important systems are "insecure" by your definition. I'll give you $100k cash no questions asked if you can provide me with copies of my SSH private keys held on such devices. Your definition is meaningless and not useful for reasoning or communication.

a point as salient as it is germane. this is exactly why open-source software and hardware mobile device projects[0] will only continue to proliferate. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro

autoexec 3y ago
As much as I want to support those kinds of devices they're all insanely priced and have earned a reputation for failing at the most basic tasks. Maybe after it's been more than 3-5 years since the last forum post titled "can make/receive calls" I'll give pine phones another look.
- nickburns 3y ago
  i agree the whole concept is not too far past proof at present.

fifteen1506 3y ago

Most are happy to outsource root to the OS manufacturer. And while I demand having root on Desktop, I don't see it happening on mobile for the majority.

autoexec 3y ago
Most phone users are oblivious to what root even is and yet still hate it when changes are pushed to their devices without notice, with no ability to revert to how things were or prevent unwanted changes in the future. This isn't acceptance but rather learned helplessness.
- Eji1700 3y ago
  Most users click on every single download link and install shit they shouldn't touch. The simple problem has always been that when you're selling someone a $1000 piece of hardware that's supposed to "just work" how much do you let their ignorance fuck it all up. Now granted that's not an argument for locking away access from those who choose to accept the responsibility, as has always been the case, but the idea that there was any other outcome was absurd. Yes it'd be nice if everyone had some tech savvy common sense, but even now when we have generations growing up with it, actual understanding is far and few between when looking at the general population. People don't care, and don't want to, and it can make things risky.
  - lyu07282 3y ago
    Well people are technological illiterates for the most part, but the mobile platforms are dumbed down to such a degree that it would be impossible for people to learn even if they grew up with it. It's a vicious cycle, you have to design these mobile platforms for infants because that's the only way you can keep them safe, but they will never learn anything about computer or network technology using something designed to infantilize them. The thing is, it's not that I particularly care about people, but it's made Android/iOS incredibly irritating to use, I avoid it as much as I can. It's not just that it wants to protect me from myself, as much as it doesn't let me do what I want to do, it feels like computing with a straightjacket on. Build a fort knox of sandboxes and SELinux, that's fantastic, as long as you give me the keys and blueprints, and for christ sake, stop pretending that my phone isn't a computer.

chuckadams 3y ago

Any system that has a concept of root access is insecure by definition. See, I can do silly categorical statements too.

marcosdumay 3y ago
Now you can try making true ones.
nickburns 3y ago
categorical ≠ silly ...unless you care to elaborate on why you disagree with this statement in substance and/or on point?
- eganist 3y ago
  > categorical ≠ silly In the sentence "See, I can do silly categorical statements too," the adjectives "silly" and "categorical" both modify the noun "statements" and are not themselves related to one another. That's why OP used both of them. If the two words were synonymous, only one would be required. It's fun nitpicking nitpicks.
  - nickburns 3y ago
    adjectives modify nouns. sure is.
  - nickburns 3y ago
    i see your careful edit. (i ran out of time myself.) they're called parts of speech. your comment makes much more sense now. welcome.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      Hi please stop
      - nickburns 3y ago

ragnese 3y ago

I remember being chastised in some Android subreddits years ago for going against the (probably astroturf) opinion that having root access was "insecure". Sigh...

autoexec 3y ago

It'd be hilarious if phones hadn't largely replaced desktops/laptops for most people. I feel bad for all the kids who grew up/will grow up with nothing but a device primarily designed for media consumption and the collection of their private data for a computer.

whoomp12342 3y ago
they will never know the raw power of x86/x64 architecture and are limited to the mere throughput of an arm processor.
- YoshiRulz 3y ago
  ISA doesn't determine speed (and not every workload is CPU-bound). In fact ARM, being RISC, would probably outperform x86 if you looked at a hardware+software stack that wasn't tuned for battery life above all else like Android is. For example, Apple Silicon Macs and Microsoft's upcoming Snapdragon laptops.
  - whoomp12342 3y ago
    I never said speed. I said power, as in voltage

switch007 3y ago

The grapheneos devs are really, really against root. What are your thoughts on that?

commoner 3y ago
Anyone who prefers root access on Android with a locked bootloader (on the OSes that support it) can use avbroot: https://github.com/chenxiaolong/avbroot https://github.com/chenxiaolong/avbroot Works great with CalyxOS and GrapheneOS.
- sureglymop 3y ago
  What about OTA updates? Do they preserve it?
  - strcat 3y ago
    No, it's not compatible with receiving official over-the-air updates. Similarly to if you build and signed the OS properly, you'll need to make each of the updates yourself. Unlike building and signing the OS properly, you will not have the basic security model intact but rather will be massively rolling back security and trusting a huge portion of the OS with root access. Giving root to a massive portion of the OS destroys the fine grained access control and isolation model used throughout the OS. It makes exploitation much easier to do and much easier to hide. It also makes persistence a given since persistent root access can be given out which means an attacker doesn't need any verified boot bypass anymore. It's odd to go through all this effort to continue signing the OS for verified boot while losing the main verified boot security model which makes it useful. If you want root access, build and sign userdebug builds with ro.adb.secure=1, which is officially supported by GrapheneOS and only exposes root access via ADB which you should only use from the computer where you're building the OS. It would be possible to add some kind of key combination at boot to disable loading user installed applications, etc. and instead making a terminal with root access available. Not clear how that's really useful though. Instead, what these projects are doing is giving out root access to a massive portion of the OS in order to be able to give out full root access to apps. This is used as a shortcut to implement features in a way that massively reduces security even if you never use it. Implementing those features properly integrated into the OS following the principle of least privilege is the proper approach. Most of the features people believe they need this hack to achieve are doable without it, such as filtering traffic with your own firewall rules while also using a VPN which is a standard Android feature available to apps.

whoomp12342 3y ago

Any system exposed to the public internet is insecure by its very definition.

AnarchismIsCool 3y ago

Root is complicated, I would refactor that to "Any system where you don't have access to the bootloader signing keys is insecure". If you can't run your own code on the device, you can't really trust it.

sneak 3y ago

Then tons of my most important systems are "insecure" by your definition. I'll give you $100k cash no questions asked if you can provide me with copies of my SSH private keys held on such devices. Your definition is meaningless and not useful for reasoning or communication.