Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

On non-rooted Android 17, ADB uninstall of system apps fails

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 204 posts

Re: On non-rooted Android 17, ADB uninstall of system apps fails

#61

Post by hparadiz »

skinfaxi wrote: post #57
hparadiz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crypographic flow that allows payments to work is straight up pub/priv key encryption with one time use tokens. It's not something you can hack. As soon you see the token it's already been used and thrown away. So whatever nonsense about decompiling literally doesn't matter.

You can patch out the payment checks if you can decompile it

The payment doesn't happen on the device. It happens at the VISA/Mastercard/AMEX level. So "the app" should be doing the validation upstream on the server side and simply reporting yes/no to the app. If you hack the yes/no okay but most payments are for physical things IRL so the payment gateway that is not on your phone is gonna be like ??? - in other words it's on the app not to trust a raw true/false signal and instead rely on server side checks. This is all irrelevant. I make regular massive purchases on my linux box where I can read the memory. It doesn't change anything.

Re: On non-rooted Android 17, ADB uninstall of system apps fails

#62

Post by achierius »

K0balt wrote: post #55

Seriously question; why is the answer to this not a phone that can just run GNU/Linux? Is it just the lack of application support? I mean, you’ll have blobs, but at least at the os level you’ll have options? Can’t you run an android sandbox in Linux? Docker phone? I’m sure I’m missing something here, but what?

Desktop operating systems != phone operating systems. You need to have a lot of support for things like "sleep apps you're not using right now" or you'll burn through battery. Not to mention that we tend to expect a lot of functionality which only works when the OS enables it, e.g. the sort of app-to-app coordination enabled by Android's App Intents. You certainly could build something like that on top of DBus, but, well, you'd have to build it.

Re: On non-rooted Android 17, ADB uninstall of system apps fails

#63

Post by pixard »

hparadiz wrote: post #54
graceful6800 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried extracting, decompiling, and modifying someone else's app? It wasn't hard before LLMs and it's nearly trivial now.

The crypographic flow that allows payments to work is straight up pub/priv key encryption with one time use tokens. It's not something you can hack. As soon you see the token it's already been used and thrown away. So whatever nonsense about decompiling literally doesn't matter.

He said his app is a one time payment. Presumably there isn’t a backend and he relies on App Store purchases. I know, it’s shocking an app could just be an actual application rather than a web view.

Re: On non-rooted Android 17, ADB uninstall of system apps fails

#64

Post by zekica »

achierius wrote: post #62
K0balt wrote: post #55

Seriously question; why is the answer to this not a phone that can just run GNU/Linux? Is it just the lack of application support? I mean, you’ll have blobs, but at least at the os level you’ll have options? Can’t you run an android sandbox in Linux? Docker phone? I’m sure I’m missing something here, but what?

Desktop operating systems != phone operating systems. You need to have a lot of support for things like "sleep apps you're not using right now" or you'll burn through battery. Not to mention that we tend to expect a lot of functionality which only works when the OS enables it, e.g. the sort of app-to-app coordination enabled by Android's App Intents. You certainly could build something like that on top of DBus, but,…

xdg already provides "portals" and "XDG Intents" that implement most of what android does. Flatpak implements most of the sandboxing you have on android. It doesn't have feature parity but IMO it doesn't need to. CGroups and systemd-user can prevent apps from running in the background.

Re: On non-rooted Android 17, ADB uninstall of system apps fails

#65

Post by Telaneo »

K0balt wrote: post #55

Seriously question; why is the answer to this not a phone that can just run GNU/Linux? Is it just the lack of application support? I mean, you’ll have blobs, but at least at the os level you’ll have options? Can’t you run an android sandbox in Linux? Docker phone? I’m sure I’m missing something here, but what?

Many of the apps that people need to have smartphone to access will not run in an Android sandbox. Banking apps are the obvious example.

Not to mention that the options outside iOS and Android are slim and for the most part bad (or atleast simply even worse than those).

Re: On non-rooted Android 17, ADB uninstall of system apps fails

#66

Post by zb3 »

yorwba wrote: post #17
develoopest wrote: post #5

I don't understand why ensuring general-purpose computing is not a priority of the European Union. All that talk about sovereignty, and we are giving full control of our digital lives to 2 American companies.

There is no shortage of general-purpose computing hardware in the EU. If you need some general-purpose compute to make a car, an oven, or a phone, you can get it. That consumers mostly buy special-purpose devices that don't always allow them to make full use of the possibilities of the hardware is hardly a sovereignity challenge.

Show me where I can get a general-purpose computing hardware with 8GB+ of RAM that fits in my pocket and has a touchscreen.

Re: On non-rooted Android 17, ADB uninstall of system apps fails

#68

Post by inigyou »

mosura wrote: post #47
inigyou wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about the government of the EU. You seem to be talking about all the countries and the people in the countries.

You need to parse the word mentality in context. The root problem here is the EU is culturally broken, and until some grand disaster will simply decline ever further with everyone involved wondering why no one else is doing anything about it.

Why don't we export some better culture to Europe then? That would be a good place and now would be a good time for Americans to flee to.

Re: On non-rooted Android 17, ADB uninstall of system apps fails

#69

Post by sophrosyne42 »

hparadiz wrote: post #50
Elfener wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GrapheneOS or other custom ROMs don't solve the actual problem that you can't just buy a smartphone and install any operating system like you can with an actual computer, despite technically being one. Also, GrapheneOS supports device attestation (the non-google kind at least), which is still ridiculous as such systems have no benefit to people, only to technofeudalist corporations.

Device attestation is how you can use private keys you don't actually have access to. It has a lot of value to literally anyone who wants to store tokens or use one time authentication codes. Linux folks need to implement the full stack and offer an open alternative to payments, secrets, and tokens. In the age of LLMs there is no excuse. It is annoying as hell that I can't buy a System76 or Framework laptop with a fi…

Framework has a fingerprint sensor. [1]

[1] https://frame.work/products/fingerprint-reader-kit?v=FRANTD0...

Post reply on HN