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Linux phones are more important now than ever

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Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#301

Post by 63stack »

mschuster91 wrote: post #281
preisschild wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Pay requires SafetyNet verification, which means it only works with a Google-approved hard & software combination, so not with GrapheneOS for example... I hate that banks use this proprietary "standard" for NFC payments

I get where that one is coming from though - tap-to-pay is considered second-factor-authenticated, aka no PIN entry is necessary at the PoS terminal because the user already entered their PIN or presented biometric credentials to the smartphone. If a malware were able to snatch the key material that represents the credit card outright or it could (by running as root) act to the TEE like it were Google Pay's NFC contr…

>If a malware were able to snatch the key material that represents the credit card

I'm pretty sure that data is stored in the secure enclave, which is impossible to access by design, root, no root, bootloader unlocked, google approved or not.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#302

Post by 63stack »

nicman23 wrote: post #298
microtonal wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Custom ROMs do not work with remote attestation (typically), so that means saying bye bye to a lot of apps, including some banking apps.

please research before spreading missinformation. the specific gsi rom passes strong out of the box

Saying that custom roms typically fail attestation is not spreading misinformation, it is very correct, and google is closing the door on it fast.

It's possible that this one random rom that you mentioned passes it today, but it might not pass tomorrow.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#303

Post by figmert »

hypeatei wrote: post #62
jeffparsons wrote: post #17

My Android phone prevents me from taking screenshots if an app author doesn't want me to. My Android phone prevents me from recording phone calls at the request of my carrier, even though it's totally legal for me to do so in my jurisdiction. I'm not loving where this is all going.

> prevents me from taking screenshots if an app author doesn't want me to The most frustrating part about this "feature" is that you don't know it's enabled until the screenshot is taken and you're left with a picture of nothing. That and some app authors thinking they're protecting you with this (referring to banking apps in particular)

You're tech savvy enough, you're not the target for such a feature. The target is the grandmas and grandpas, and other people who have no idea about such things.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#304

Post by nicman23 »

VariousPrograms wrote: post #116

As someone willing to put up with all manner of nonsense (overpriced/underpowered hardware, clunky UI, endless troubleshooting), battery life on mobile Linux devices alone prevents me from using them in the real world. Is there a single Linux phone/tablet that can last an 8 hour day of actual use? Librem/Pinephone/Juno can't. My uConsole can't. Different category, but my MNT mini laptop lasts like 4 hours and can't b…

yeah there are lots of tablets and 2-1 with amd chips that can do 8 hours on light usage.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#305

Post by type0 »

Telaneo wrote: post #86
ronsor wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in non-US countries apparently have a litany of government and banking apps which are mandatory at all times.

They're rarely completely mandatory (Grandma still needs to be able to access her bank too), but the alternative is usually a whole lot more inconvenient (sometimes for bad reasons, sometimes just because that's how life is).

> (Grandma still needs to be able to access her bank too)

In some countries they are mandated if not by law then by implementation, a relative or a social worker is tasked to get grandma equipped with a "smart device". She can even borrow it for a few months from municipality services until she can afford to buy it

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#306

Post by tpm »

looofooo0 wrote: post #172
Foobar8568 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to send my new IBAN to my company, I can, no screenshot allowed on the screen with banking information. So I need to log on their website to do it. At least my new bank allows such screenshot and to copy account information directly from the app.

There is a special place in hell for people providing non copyable text information in the form of screenshots.

At this point you can just use google lens or something like that to copy text from images.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#307

Post by xzstas »

A couple of last years were quite impressive in how mobile linux improved.

Still, people claim: - open-source phones are low-end devices - but we (also) write our DTS for phones like Xiaomi, Samsung, OnePlus, etc. Personally, I've written dts for my Xiaomi 12 lite and packaged postmarketOS for it. for devices like Fairphone - there's already a good level of support in mainline - mobile linux is slow and laggy - this comes from the 1st point. modern smartphones works quite smooth, and mine xiaomi phone running on sm7250 (mid level soc from qcom) feels very snappy. hell, even desktop browsers works quite good on more or less modern phones (chromium is especially smooth) - UI is trash - please check out gnome-mobile. it's an impressive piece of work and feels very much like modern mobile UIs - my bank/government/etc forces me to use ios/android app - we have waydroid! so, you can run any android app from your launcher (which will be running inside a container with lineageos). the integration might not be super complete right now, although it closes the gap for me.

Of course, there are many gaps (like camera works on very few devices and photo/video quality cannot be compared to android; some apps are still not adaptive) but many enthusiasts continue to improve on all the directions. Kudos to all of them! Personally, I wait for VoLTE and immutable systemd-based pmOS.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#308

Post by 3036e4 »

My next phone will almost certainly be two phones. One cheap and super standard Android phone to just run banking apps and similar that insists on Google Play etc. Locked down and boring, turned off most of the time. Then a second phone for everything else (terminal with sshd, emacs, emulators, media players ... the stuff that allows a phone to be the general purpose computer it should be).

Looks increasingly unlikely that there will be convenient ways to have the best of both those worlds in a single device. For now it is somewhat possible with Android, but the experience keeps getting worse.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#309

Post by cranberryturkey »

shaky-carrousel wrote: post #240
cranberryturkey wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My HP laptop lasts 2 hours running linux. My macbook air m4 lasts 12 hours.

Your MacBook air has a team behind it ensuring it runs as efficiently as possible. Your HP laptop running linux has... you.

But I'm a good team.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#310

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mr_mitm wrote: post #246
godelski wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some sense they are. But being protected either from a consequence of my own stupidity or a consequence of their lack of security. I think the worst part of all is that these "bandaids" are being used in place of actual security. I don't need to be protected from my own stupidity nor do I need security theater.

I think the threat model here is that a different, malicious app (compromised, installed accidentally or by the means of social engineering) might take screenshots of your screen and forward them to take advantage of you. You can file this under one's "own stupidity" as well, sure, but in the end they're not protecting you, they're protecting themselves, because banks might be liable for these kind of things, and by…

> they're protecting themselves

[citation needed]

The theory here is that it provides a marginal security improvement if there is malware on the phone, but if there is malware on the phone then there are a hundred other things it can do to the same effect and you're likely screwed anyway. And by doing this, you also block the user from taking screenshots, which is bad, because screenshots are harder for computers to parse, and that's a marginal security advantage. If the user is going to send e.g. their account number to someone else (for a legitimate reason), it's better that they do it as a screenshot than that you force them to type it as text, because text is machine searchable. Which is worse when that messaging system gets compromised and then the attacker can do a text search for a pattern matching a bank routing number and be more likely to discover that message than if it was only there in a JPG.

Meanwhile the primary consequence of preventing screenshots is to inconvenience customers, which is an actual cost to the bank, because there is only a threshold amount of BS customers will put up with before switching banks and banks are constantly pushing up against that line already with all of their other BS.

But then the lower-quality banks do it anyway because there is a box they can check which sounds like it's locking something down, so they check it without thinking. Which is a great canary for customers who want to know if their bank is dumb -- if they require this then they probably do all kinds of other dumb stuff and it's a strong indication you should switch banks before you get screwed by them doing some other foolish nonsense.

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