Android may soon restrict on-device ADB

Post by lucideer » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

wahnfrieden wrote: post #185

lucideer wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I'm a developer, I've published Android apps, & I've still managed to lose access to a device that had dev settings enabled purely because remote adb enablement is a (extremely fiddly) toggle that happened to be off on the device at the time the screen broke. Having these two enabled simultaneously is such a rare case in the wild as to be entirely negligible as a vector.

Sometimes attacks happen from users being instructed to enable settings in order to achieve something regardless of whether you’d expect them to have a reason to use the setting

Post by jambalaya8 » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 4:58 PM UTC

atoav wrote: post #227

wahnfrieden wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes attacks happen from users being instructed to enable settings in order to achieve something regardless of whether you’d expect them to have a reason to use the setting

Sometimes people fall down the stairs in their own homes. That doesn't mean the government should mandate everybody to wear helmets at home does it? A measure needs to be in proportion to the actual risk it seeks to mitigate.

Post by wartywhoa23 » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:02 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #224

Razengan wrote: post #87

Does anyone have any doubt left that we're headed for a future where you need a government ID to use any computing device, and only allowed to do government-approved tasks and view government-approved content? Not a rhetorical tinfoil question: Does anyone still believe there's some hope for personal freedoms?

> Does anyone still believe there's some hope for personal freedoms? as long as such personal freedoms gives users the ability to skirt the profit motives of companies making these devices, there will always be a force to try restrict it. The internet, as it has been, is quite an anomaly, but inevitably, power that the people have gets usurped one way or another. It's just a matter of time.

Post by ignoramous » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:05 PM UTC

zb3 wrote: post #303

ignoramous wrote: post #49

The article overlooks security implications from spyware, which is a huge problem not only for financial applications, but personal safety, too [0]. Per FTC, a stalkerware will: geo locate, read call list & record calls, read notifications, texts, & possibly emails, access gallery, camera, & files, and monitor network activity. [1] You could do all of those with "on-device adb" (in some cases, with just the appropria…

> Per FTC, a stalkerware will: geo locate, read call list & record calls, read notifications, texts, & possibly emails, access gallery, camera, & files, and monitor network activity. Like Google Mobile Services on stock Android?

Post by iamnothere » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:08 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #189

II2II wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In other words: this is all but impossible to impact regular users, and it requires a particularly careless developer to be hit by it. Have you ever worked with someone who barely knows how to use a mobile phone? They will hand their phone over to someone they barely even know to do something they don't understand. They will follow instructions from a stranger over the phone, without understanding what the phone is…

Following this logic, shouldn't we just ban smart phones for everyone then? If we need to dumb down all technology to the absolute lowest level, we should probably ban computers or at least require an official government-controlled license to get access to one. Is this a world you want to live in? Me neither.