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Android became a lost cause the second they introduced hardware remote attestation.

Even if there was a way to install your own software, there's no point in doing so. You're "tampering" with the device. Fail attestation and you're untrusted. You get banned from everything. If you hack, you're ostracized from digital society. You're a second class citizen. Can't communicate. Can't bank. Can't stream. Can't play video games. Can't do pretty much anything.

That's the future of Android. GrapheneOS is quite literally the last hope for Android, and only because by some miracle there are companies out there who started trusting Graphene's attestation keys. If that hope ever dies then we might as well buy iPhones.

3 comments

> and only because by some miracle there are companies out there who started trusting Graphene's attestation keys.

Are the bank apps trusting graphene keys or google them self? Isn't play attestation completely in the hands of google.

Play Attestation is a Google hosted database of build keys/hashes for known Android builds. Android-side of this attestation is an API which calculates and returns those hashes to the app.

There's nothing preventing the app from verifying the build itself against its own database. So they can allowlist GrapheneOS builds if they want - but of course that means that all other ROMs are still banned.

> GrapheneOS is quite literally the last hope for Android

Don't they support the idea of the hardware attestation and having no root?

All of this has already been explained to fsflover in detail numerous times, but for any onlookers here are some of the project's thoughts on the subject of hardware attestation:

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116550899908879585

https://attestation.app/about

On the subject of root, it completely breaks the security model of the OS, and for very valid reasons they have no interest in having official installations with widely varying security models.

They also have no opposition to people creating their own forks to do so, and they publish comprehensive build instructions: https://grapheneos.org/build

Lo and behold: https://github.com/schnatterer/rooted-graphene

Thanks for the first link. I think I agree with everything written there.

> On the subject of root, it completely breaks the security model of the OS

This is just the opinion of the GrapheneOS team. I've never seen any actual data supporting it. Also it contradicts to the security approach of Qubes OS, doesn't it?

> Thanks for the first link. I think I agree with everything written there.

You're welcome, happy to help.

> This is just the opinion of the GrapheneOS team.

I don't think it can be dismissed as mere opinion, but even if it were, that's their prerogative: it's their project. A lot of people seem to think they should take counsel from everyone with an opinion about their free OS, even if it fundamentally changes the basic nature of the project, wihle people who are free to fork it and do what they like with it.

If we're going to invoke the concept that FOSS fundamentally means it's somehow more secure because we are free to audit it (a premise I find faulty but not for any relevant purposes here), we should expand that view to include the concept that anyone who publishes their FOSS project is under no obligation to increase their workload and change the fundamental nature of their project to satisfy requests they don't view as being in harmony with the project.

Anyone who's capable of auditing FOSS code is a thousand times more capable than they need to be to follow instructions to build a rooted GrapheneOS installation, and some do.

> I've never seen any actual data supporting it.

What kind of data are you envisioning that would support it?

> Also it contradicts to the security approach of Qubes OS, doesn't it?

That's an interesting question, but I want to make sure I'm understanding it right. In what way would it contradict it? Is it a case of, Qubes OS gives you root access in dom0, TemplateVMs and AppVMs, by GrapheneOS's logic, doesn't that undermine its security?

Or were you going a different direction with it?

Agreed, GrapheneOS is underrated.