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reCAPTCHA Mobile Verification Is Bringing the Play Integrity API to Desktops

109 points by Cider9986 6mo ago

CalRobert 6mo ago
Aside from the horrendous privacy implications, is there a possible argument that this is anti-competitive?
- realusername 6mo ago
  That's the whole goal of the concept. Safetynet (the predecessor of Play Integrity) was developed to block CyanogenMod and then later used to block Huawei.
  - jeroenhd 6mo ago
    App developers need to put effort into enabling these APIs so it's not like Google is actively blocking your favorite apps. Their makers are. Like with reCAPTCHA, there are other services and libraries out there to detect root access and other things companies want to detect in their apps.
    - realusername 6mo ago
      Sure, Google was betting that bureaucratic companies would enroll voluntarily and it worked. > Like with reCAPTCHA, there are other services and libraries out there to detect root access and other things companies want to detect in their apps. My opinion on this is that any method to check integrity, root access or if developer mode is enabled is a security vulnerability by itself, no such app should be able to know that.
      - jeroenhd 6mo ago
        > My opinion on this is that any method to check integrity, root access or if developer mode is enabled is a security vulnerability by itself, no such app should be able to know that. I think knowledge of such information should be available to all apps, but I think apps should not be so annoyingly restrictive. There's absolutely no reason why games or generic apps need to act on any of this information.
        realusername 6mo ago
        Realistically, in which scenario this information can be useful? I can't think of anything, it should be removed. It's been misused by banking app and games, I've never seen a legitimate use case.
        jeroenhd 6mo ago
        To verify that the user or someone who had physical access to the device (border checks, etc.) hasn't messed with the firmware. If I were a bank I wouldn't want to be on the hook for someone getting their bank account drained by the custom ROM someone downloaded from XDA. Then there's the DRM thing, where copyright owners make companies like Netflix sign a document like "if you don't enforce strong DRM, you cannot serve our media". Their choice is either use DRM (which in turn uses integrity checking) or not serve you at all. As a user, you once again have the choice of "buy the box set" or "use a smartphone with a trusted OS". There's also the corporate use case, companies have remote wipe capabilities for data integrity purposes and don't want their employees rooting phones. Pokemon Go used it to check whether people were spoofing their location and ruining the game for others. They were especially assholish about it, but that should hardly be a surprise when Nintendo is involved at any part of the chain. Any game with in-app purchases wants to verify that nobody messed with the APK to get paid content for free. It's almost a basic business requirement. Combining limited-lifetime remote attestation tokens with data fetch URLs means superweatherapp-patched-luckypatcher.apk on LineageOS will not be able to pretend to be the real app (GPlay on stock Android already offers app verification APIs). In Google's case, "this is a physical device and not an emulator" is a strong signal that the user is not a bot pretending to be a human. In an age where CAPTCHAs are easier to solve for AI than they are for humans, that kind of verification is worth a lot. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of use cases here, but the technology is useful. It's often used in apps and games I would never want to run on my phone anyway, except for banking apps perhaps.
        realusername 6mo ago
        Then it's a matter of personal opinion, I would not count any of the ones you listed as valid. Integrity doesn't prevent customers to download a fake banking app, DRMs should be legally banned to be honest (sorry/not sorry media companies) and passports are best in physical form. For company usage, locking the bootloader accomplishes the same thing. As for bots, it doesn't prevent bots as you have unmodified device farms on racks. It's actually how ad fraud is done at the moment, they don't bother modifying the devices. Pushing integrity even more will just funnel even more money to this ad fraud mafia as they will have a new source of revenue.
- jeroenhd 6mo ago
  the only anticompetitive element I can think of is the way they pushed their scanning app to Android phones with Play Services. On IOS they're not in control but still able to launch an app (app snippets the feature is called, I think?) but on Android they themselves killed off Instant Apps because nobody used it. If one of Google's competitors like hCAPTCHA tries to do the same, they'll have more friction on Android than Google does. When it comes to GrapheneOS, it's the website owners that decided to block those devices by using this service. There are other services that don't block those phones they can use instead.
charcircuit 6mo ago
If Windows wasn't so far behind Apple and the rest of the industry in regards to integrity APIs this wouldn't be necessary. It's embarrassing for Microsoft that someone needs to use a separate, more secure device since their security is so bad.
- chadgpt3 6mo ago
  It's embarrassing for Hacker News that people here are commenting to support attestation systems that prevent you from owning the device you bought.
  - charcircuit 6mo ago
    Attestation isn't against being able to do whatever you want with your own device. It just means that if you want other people to trust your custom device you need to get them to trust your signing key.
    - foltik 6mo ago
      Not sure if you’re being deliberately obtuse, but a signing key means nothing by itself. What exactly do you think is being attested TO? Thats right: that the user can’t do what they want with their own device. Obviously your key wouldn’t be trusted if they could. There is no other conceivable purpose that attestation could serve.
      - dns_snek 6mo ago
        > Not sure if you’re being deliberately obtuse Yes, they are. If there's a thread on HN about user-hostile features, you can be pretty confident that they've written a comment defending it.
      - charcircuit 6mo ago
        There are many changes that are possible which do not harm the integrity of applications. >the user can’t do what they want with their own device In the same way the user can't make their device have the Microsoft Word app send them $1 million from Microsoft's bank account. Once other people are in the picture you can't always have your way.
rvz 6mo ago
I am going to assume that this also destroys millions of AI agents and bot scrapers this time which is why some “AI Engineers” were complaining about this recently. Well, this is how Google will kill all the scrapers on its search data.
- jeroenhd 6mo ago
  Not entirely, Google's own page says: > Fraud Defense leverages a sophisticated and adaptable risk analysis engine to shield against automated software. It is specifically designed to orchestrate trust for the agentic web, neutralizing malicious scrapers while welcoming legitimate AI agents. I'm sure it'll block a whole bunch of awful scrapers but if Google doesn't hate a bot, it'll be able to pass.
  - dns_snek 6mo ago
    Sounds like an anti-competitive play to build an AI moat. They'll introduce a sham "verification program" and only allow bots operated by entities large enough to sue them for anti-competitive conduct.
- hsbauauvhabzb 6mo ago
  Does mass scraping need google for content discovery? Surely most sites contain a site map or index that would effectively self enumerate once you know the domain, which is more often than not publicly disclosed?
  - rvz 6mo ago
    What matters is when websites put this new version of reCAPTCHA on their site, just like archive.is has done. Then the scrapers will have a hard time getting around that.
bekon 6mo ago
[dead]
- hsbauauvhabzb 6mo ago
  That is a cost that our future authoritarian world leader has decided is more than acceptable.
- worldofmatthew 6mo ago
  Blind people need to start suing at least in America the ADA is far easier to win against large companies than in the UK as the equality act is treated vastly weaker by judges than if someone presented a religion or race lawsuit. America is the only place to take down big tech discrimination.
  - charcircuit 6mo ago
    Smart glasses or apps like BeMyEyes can assist blind people through these flows. AI's visual understanding has progressed tremendously over the past couple decades.
    - worldofmatthew 6mo ago
      Requiring extra expenses is discrimination.
      - charcircuit 6mo ago
        The expense is not paid toward the business and it is normal for assistive tools to be paid for.
        deleted 6mo ago
        [deleted]
- CodesInChaos 6mo ago
  This one sounds less problematic for blind people than reCAPTCHA, which relied on a visual challenge. Especially since google or the screen reader software can easily add a browser extension that forwards the challenge to the phone removing the need for scanning a QR code. The real problems with this technology are control (need a google approved phone) and privacy/tracking.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
M95D 6mo ago
So, let me see if I understand it: Apple+Google got punished by the EU for non-competitive practices and now they offered to ordinary websites their most desired features: bot blocking and unavoidable user tracking across all devices and operating systems. And if EU wants to sue, they'll have to sue each and every website that requires this, and they would loose, because there are no alternatives and even if there were, they would be just as bad. Great job Google+Apple! I'm proud of you. /s
rambambram 6mo ago
> linux desktop That's the only part I'm interested in. I've read this article - or something similar - before and it doesn't surprise me that these big tech companies want more control. What I don't understand is how this affects linux desktop? Is it going to be that online services or websites or webapps can choose to require attestation? Whether you use this OS or that OS? Or are linux developers forced to change their open source software?
- CodesInChaos 6mo ago
  It'll affect you the same way reCAPTCHA does. A website decides to use "Google Cloud Fraud", and locks you out if you don't complete the "challenges" it shows. Your OS doesn't matter at all.
  - rambambram 6mo ago
    Thanks! It was slightly confusing, now I get it.
t_mahmood 6mo ago
In recent r/Android update post, this is put at the very last, I believe this completely verifies that Google is implementing hardware attestation. And, r/android being mostly google worshipers won't say anything, but also it's difficult to parse through such a huge ai generated post. New data isolation and verification tools Expanded Binary Transparency: Anyone can now verify that the critical software layers on their device were actually authorized by Google and haven't been secretly modified by attackers. We are publishing a public, append-only ledger that provides cryptographic proof that production Google applications and Mainline Modules are the authentic versions released by Google. If a Google-signed app isn’t on this ledger, we didn’t intend to release it. Android OS verification: We have seen some bad actors begin to distribute malicious, unofficial versions of the Android OS that secretly compromise device integrity. To combat this, we are introducing Android OS verification in Android 17. Launching initially on Pixel devices, this feature helps you verify that your device is running an official, widely distributed build. Keeping your ambient data confidential and isolated: Android 17 introduces AISeal with pKVM which, along with Private AI Compute, creates an isolated, verifiable, hardware-backed environment where ambient data can be processed securely
- hurfdurf 6mo ago
  https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1tb8dxv/new_features_emojis_security_improvements_heres/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1tb8dxv/new_featur... https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1tb8dxv/new_features_emojis_security_improvements_heres/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1tb8dxv/new_featur... https://blog.google/security/whats-new-in-android-security-privacy-2026/ https://blog.google/security/whats-new-in-android-security-p...
reddalo 6mo ago
This is very bad. Google has truly become evil. My only hope left is that the EU will step in and prevent this. At least in Europe.
pimterry 6mo ago
This is begging for anti-competitive investigations, surely? It's explicit collusion between the largest mobile makers and key app-based services (e.g. gov services, communication tools, banking) to directly block any competing OS. They're publicly agreeing that only users using their approved mobile devices are allowed to do banking, and competitors cannot. I'm not sure how much more clearly anti-competitive this could be.
- chaz6 6mo ago
  I expect that once the infrastructure is in place then it will be co-opted by governments to enforce their control over the digital domain.
aussieguy1234 6mo ago
I don't buy the anti bot argument. Cheap Android phones can be purchased for less than $40 and QR code scanning can be automated. Bot farms will evolve. The only possible reason for this is to lock out the competition.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
prashantk_ 6mo ago
[flagged]
ChrisArchitect 6mo ago
Related: Google Cloud fraud defense, the next evolution of reCAPTCHA https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48039362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48039362 Google broke reCAPTCHA for de-googled Android users https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48067119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48067119 Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48063199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48063199

109 points by Cider9986 6mo ago

CalRobert 6mo ago

Aside from the horrendous privacy implications, is there a possible argument that this is anti-competitive?

realusername 6mo ago
That's the whole goal of the concept. Safetynet (the predecessor of Play Integrity) was developed to block CyanogenMod and then later used to block Huawei.
- jeroenhd 6mo ago
  App developers need to put effort into enabling these APIs so it's not like Google is actively blocking your favorite apps. Their makers are. Like with reCAPTCHA, there are other services and libraries out there to detect root access and other things companies want to detect in their apps.
  - realusername 6mo ago
    Sure, Google was betting that bureaucratic companies would enroll voluntarily and it worked. > Like with reCAPTCHA, there are other services and libraries out there to detect root access and other things companies want to detect in their apps. My opinion on this is that any method to check integrity, root access or if developer mode is enabled is a security vulnerability by itself, no such app should be able to know that.
    - jeroenhd 6mo ago
      > My opinion on this is that any method to check integrity, root access or if developer mode is enabled is a security vulnerability by itself, no such app should be able to know that. I think knowledge of such information should be available to all apps, but I think apps should not be so annoyingly restrictive. There's absolutely no reason why games or generic apps need to act on any of this information.
      - realusername 6mo ago
        Realistically, in which scenario this information can be useful? I can't think of anything, it should be removed. It's been misused by banking app and games, I've never seen a legitimate use case.
        jeroenhd 6mo ago
        To verify that the user or someone who had physical access to the device (border checks, etc.) hasn't messed with the firmware. If I were a bank I wouldn't want to be on the hook for someone getting their bank account drained by the custom ROM someone downloaded from XDA. Then there's the DRM thing, where copyright owners make companies like Netflix sign a document like "if you don't enforce strong DRM, you cannot serve our media". Their choice is either use DRM (which in turn uses integrity checking) or not serve you at all. As a user, you once again have the choice of "buy the box set" or "use a smartphone with a trusted OS". There's also the corporate use case, companies have remote wipe capabilities for data integrity purposes and don't want their employees rooting phones. Pokemon Go used it to check whether people were spoofing their location and ruining the game for others. They were especially assholish about it, but that should hardly be a surprise when Nintendo is involved at any part of the chain. Any game with in-app purchases wants to verify that nobody messed with the APK to get paid content for free. It's almost a basic business requirement. Combining limited-lifetime remote attestation tokens with data fetch URLs means superweatherapp-patched-luckypatcher.apk on LineageOS will not be able to pretend to be the real app (GPlay on stock Android already offers app verification APIs). In Google's case, "this is a physical device and not an emulator" is a strong signal that the user is not a bot pretending to be a human. In an age where CAPTCHAs are easier to solve for AI than they are for humans, that kind of verification is worth a lot. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of use cases here, but the technology is useful. It's often used in apps and games I would never want to run on my phone anyway, except for banking apps perhaps.
        realusername 6mo ago
        Then it's a matter of personal opinion, I would not count any of the ones you listed as valid. Integrity doesn't prevent customers to download a fake banking app, DRMs should be legally banned to be honest (sorry/not sorry media companies) and passports are best in physical form. For company usage, locking the bootloader accomplishes the same thing. As for bots, it doesn't prevent bots as you have unmodified device farms on racks. It's actually how ad fraud is done at the moment, they don't bother modifying the devices. Pushing integrity even more will just funnel even more money to this ad fraud mafia as they will have a new source of revenue.
jeroenhd 6mo ago
the only anticompetitive element I can think of is the way they pushed their scanning app to Android phones with Play Services. On IOS they're not in control but still able to launch an app (app snippets the feature is called, I think?) but on Android they themselves killed off Instant Apps because nobody used it. If one of Google's competitors like hCAPTCHA tries to do the same, they'll have more friction on Android than Google does. When it comes to GrapheneOS, it's the website owners that decided to block those devices by using this service. There are other services that don't block those phones they can use instead.

charcircuit 6mo ago

If Windows wasn't so far behind Apple and the rest of the industry in regards to integrity APIs this wouldn't be necessary. It's embarrassing for Microsoft that someone needs to use a separate, more secure device since their security is so bad.

chadgpt3 6mo ago
It's embarrassing for Hacker News that people here are commenting to support attestation systems that prevent you from owning the device you bought.
- charcircuit 6mo ago
  Attestation isn't against being able to do whatever you want with your own device. It just means that if you want other people to trust your custom device you need to get them to trust your signing key.
  - foltik 6mo ago
    Not sure if you’re being deliberately obtuse, but a signing key means nothing by itself. What exactly do you think is being attested TO? Thats right: that the user can’t do what they want with their own device. Obviously your key wouldn’t be trusted if they could. There is no other conceivable purpose that attestation could serve.
    - dns_snek 6mo ago
      > Not sure if you’re being deliberately obtuse Yes, they are. If there's a thread on HN about user-hostile features, you can be pretty confident that they've written a comment defending it.
    - charcircuit 6mo ago
      There are many changes that are possible which do not harm the integrity of applications. >the user can’t do what they want with their own device In the same way the user can't make their device have the Microsoft Word app send them $1 million from Microsoft's bank account. Once other people are in the picture you can't always have your way.

rvz 6mo ago

I am going to assume that this also destroys millions of AI agents and bot scrapers this time which is why some “AI Engineers” were complaining about this recently. Well, this is how Google will kill all the scrapers on its search data.

jeroenhd 6mo ago
Not entirely, Google's own page says: > Fraud Defense leverages a sophisticated and adaptable risk analysis engine to shield against automated software. It is specifically designed to orchestrate trust for the agentic web, neutralizing malicious scrapers while welcoming legitimate AI agents. I'm sure it'll block a whole bunch of awful scrapers but if Google doesn't hate a bot, it'll be able to pass.
- dns_snek 6mo ago
  Sounds like an anti-competitive play to build an AI moat. They'll introduce a sham "verification program" and only allow bots operated by entities large enough to sue them for anti-competitive conduct.
hsbauauvhabzb 6mo ago
Does mass scraping need google for content discovery? Surely most sites contain a site map or index that would effectively self enumerate once you know the domain, which is more often than not publicly disclosed?
- rvz 6mo ago
  What matters is when websites put this new version of reCAPTCHA on their site, just like archive.is has done. Then the scrapers will have a hard time getting around that.

bekon 6mo ago

[dead]

hsbauauvhabzb 6mo ago
That is a cost that our future authoritarian world leader has decided is more than acceptable.
worldofmatthew 6mo ago
Blind people need to start suing at least in America the ADA is far easier to win against large companies than in the UK as the equality act is treated vastly weaker by judges than if someone presented a religion or race lawsuit. America is the only place to take down big tech discrimination.
- charcircuit 6mo ago
  Smart glasses or apps like BeMyEyes can assist blind people through these flows. AI's visual understanding has progressed tremendously over the past couple decades.
  - worldofmatthew 6mo ago
    Requiring extra expenses is discrimination.
    - charcircuit 6mo ago
      The expense is not paid toward the business and it is normal for assistive tools to be paid for.
      - deleted 6mo ago
        [deleted]
CodesInChaos 6mo ago
This one sounds less problematic for blind people than reCAPTCHA, which relied on a visual challenge. Especially since google or the screen reader software can easily add a browser extension that forwards the challenge to the phone removing the need for scanning a QR code. The real problems with this technology are control (need a google approved phone) and privacy/tracking.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

M95D 6mo ago

So, let me see if I understand it: Apple+Google got punished by the EU for non-competitive practices and now they offered to ordinary websites their most desired features: bot blocking and unavoidable user tracking across all devices and operating systems. And if EU wants to sue, they'll have to sue each and every website that requires this, and they would loose, because there are no alternatives and even if there were, they would be just as bad. Great job Google+Apple! I'm proud of you. /s

rambambram 6mo ago

> linux desktop That's the only part I'm interested in. I've read this article - or something similar - before and it doesn't surprise me that these big tech companies want more control. What I don't understand is how this affects linux desktop? Is it going to be that online services or websites or webapps can choose to require attestation? Whether you use this OS or that OS? Or are linux developers forced to change their open source software?

CodesInChaos 6mo ago
It'll affect you the same way reCAPTCHA does. A website decides to use "Google Cloud Fraud", and locks you out if you don't complete the "challenges" it shows. Your OS doesn't matter at all.
- rambambram 6mo ago
  Thanks! It was slightly confusing, now I get it.

t_mahmood 6mo ago

In recent r/Android update post, this is put at the very last, I believe this completely verifies that Google is implementing hardware attestation. And, r/android being mostly google worshipers won't say anything, but also it's difficult to parse through such a huge ai generated post. New data isolation and verification tools Expanded Binary Transparency: Anyone can now verify that the critical software layers on their device were actually authorized by Google and haven't been secretly modified by attackers. We are publishing a public, append-only ledger that provides cryptographic proof that production Google applications and Mainline Modules are the authentic versions released by Google. If a Google-signed app isn’t on this ledger, we didn’t intend to release it. Android OS verification: We have seen some bad actors begin to distribute malicious, unofficial versions of the Android OS that secretly compromise device integrity. To combat this, we are introducing Android OS verification in Android 17. Launching initially on Pixel devices, this feature helps you verify that your device is running an official, widely distributed build. Keeping your ambient data confidential and isolated: Android 17 introduces AISeal with pKVM which, along with Private AI Compute, creates an isolated, verifiable, hardware-backed environment where ambient data can be processed securely

hurfdurf 6mo ago
https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1tb8dxv/new_features_emojis_security_improvements_heres/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1tb8dxv/new_featur... https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1tb8dxv/new_features_emojis_security_improvements_heres/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1tb8dxv/new_featur... https://blog.google/security/whats-new-in-android-security-privacy-2026/ https://blog.google/security/whats-new-in-android-security-p...

reddalo 6mo ago

This is very bad. Google has truly become evil. My only hope left is that the EU will step in and prevent this. At least in Europe.

pimterry 6mo ago

This is begging for anti-competitive investigations, surely? It's explicit collusion between the largest mobile makers and key app-based services (e.g. gov services, communication tools, banking) to directly block any competing OS. They're publicly agreeing that only users using their approved mobile devices are allowed to do banking, and competitors cannot. I'm not sure how much more clearly anti-competitive this could be.

chaz6 6mo ago
I expect that once the infrastructure is in place then it will be co-opted by governments to enforce their control over the digital domain.

aussieguy1234 6mo ago

I don't buy the anti bot argument. Cheap Android phones can be purchased for less than $40 and QR code scanning can be automated. Bot farms will evolve. The only possible reason for this is to lock out the competition.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

prashantk_ 6mo ago

[flagged]

ChrisArchitect 6mo ago

Related: Google Cloud fraud defense, the next evolution of reCAPTCHA https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48039362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48039362 Google broke reCAPTCHA for de-googled Android users https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48067119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48067119 Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48063199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48063199