Is there really a reason to get excited about this? When we look at the path they took with Android on the phones, why should we believe that they will be any different from Microsoft on the desktop?
Android’s desktop interface leaks
341–350 of 393 posts
Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
If my system is signed and verified at every boot, doesn't that guarantee that my system hasn't been tampered with? Meaning that no malware has found a way to get root access and modify it. I find this valuable.
If you can't use your own keys and verify the process yourself, then no, that is not a guarantee. Malware developers just have their software signed by the gatekeepers your device is programmed to inherently trust, because the gatekeepers don't give a shit. The App Store and Play Store are the largest vectors of malware out there, and every year they are responsible for letting their users get scammed to the tune of…
> If you can't use your own keys and verify the process yourself
The thing with security is that it is a gradient. Too many people try to win arguments on security by saying a variant of "anyway you have to trust somebody, so it will never be secure". This is exactly what you are doing here.
Say I trust GrapheneOS, the security model guarantees what I said. Obviously I have to trust something, I won't audit every single line of code and assemble billions of transistors myself.
> every year they are responsible for letting their users get scammed
Second tactic for winning a security argument: "but the users get scammed anyway". Sure they do. Because they have to. If you have a system that popular with zero scam, it probably means that the attackers don't even need to attack the human because the system itself is insecure.
Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
If my system is signed and verified at every boot, doesn't that guarantee that my system hasn't been tampered with? Meaning that no malware has found a way to get root access and modify it. I find this valuable.
I do see the value in this and also note that this feature has largely been kept from users intentionally on most other platforms. Still, this offers very little protection for the vast majority of scams to which people fall victim.
Phishing will always exist. If a system is very secure, the easiest way to attack it is to phish the human that has control over it. Complaining about that is weird... what do the people who complain want? One of those two:
- "Please make the system less secure, so that the attackers don't have to attack the human because they can just compromise the system directly"
- "Please keep making the system secure, and keep removing rights from the users, because the users prove over and over again that they cannot be trusted with anything"
You see where I am going. If you only optimise for security, then you remove all the freedom. But we obviously want freedom. So it's a compromise.
Now this compromise is a choice, and different systems can make different compromises. The freedom I want is the freedom to choose my system. I want to be able to install GrapheneOS on my phone. Complaining about macOS not being Linux would be weird: if I want Linux, I use Linux. If I use macOS, well then I have to live with the design choices of Apple.
Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks
#344I have absolutely no interest in expanding the use of Android in my life. I am, in fact, far more interested in going the other way and trying to reduce my reliance on any locked down platforms.
So you may want to consider GNU/Linux phones (Librem 5 and Pinephone). By the way, they have a real desktop mode with desktop apps, not mobile apps on a large screen.
Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're confused. I you run GrapheneOS, it is an open source platform built on top of AOSP (the Android Open Source Project). Part of the security model is that you don't run as root. I am an advanced user and I don't want to run as root on my phone, I am happy with GrapheneOS as it is distributed. Now if you want to be root, you can install an OS that allows you to be root. Just like I unlocked my bootloader,…
Meh, I'm ok with not having root on my phone. What I'm not ok with is not being able to flash whatever I want to run on it later without unlocking and wiping. For this reason I have an automated script to verify Graphene's signatures and replace them with my own. This would give me the ability to extract data using root at a later date, for example.
> What I'm not ok with is not being able to flash whatever I want to run on it later without unlocking and wiping.
The wiping is a security feature: if someone installs a new random system ("random" being defined as "not signed by the same entity"), then they can modify the system in order to attack it. The whole secure boot idea is worthless if you allow that.
Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're confused. I you run GrapheneOS, it is an open source platform built on top of AOSP (the Android Open Source Project). Part of the security model is that you don't run as root. I am an advanced user and I don't want to run as root on my phone, I am happy with GrapheneOS as it is distributed. Now if you want to be root, you can install an OS that allows you to be root. Just like I unlocked my bootloader,…
Root used to just mean knowing an admin password and rarely using it on desktop platforms for making local changes. It's changed definition for mobile if it now means just being able to run and auto-update apps from fdroid or run an app without the attestation of the company that supplies the OS, which in the worst cases takes away control completely from the user. Mobile platforms and developers solely supporting th…
Respectfully, I genuinely don't understand what you are talking about.
Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not sure what you are trying to say. Convincing a user to give their password will always be an issue, that's fundamental. But because phishing exists does not mean that security does not matter. Without security, there is no need to phish, because the system does not protect anything. Once you have a good security, then the best attack is phishing because it's easier to trick the human than the system. This mea…
You can't provide a passkey to a malicious site without writing your own web browser. And the "password" is a 128-bit integer. It completely solves the phishing-password-stealing problem.
That was an example, I was talking about phishing in general. Phishing will always exist: as long as a human has a right to do something, someone else can trick this human into doing it for them.
Passkeys are great, and they do improve the situation. But they won't remove phishing as a concept.
Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, I guess we agree but I was not clear. In general, I don't care so much if Windows or macOS become as locked as Android or iOS, as long as I can install Linux on my hardware . My point is that many people seem to complain because they want to be root on the Google-certified Android. I disagree with that: Google makes an OS where you cannot be root. If you want an OS where you can be root, you should be able to…
The problem is more that you're forced to use Google's OS. Usually just less convenient, but often in a literal sense too with these government services increasingly requiring attestation.
Yes, I totally agree with that. I really, really want to be able to install my own OS on the device I am supposed to own.
Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks
#349Tried the desktop mode on my Pixel 8 running GrapheneOS. It's getting very close to being usable. https://imgur.com/a/Wfv6Hmt
On my Pixel 9a (also on GrapheneOS) the biggest limitation is it can't be set to higher than 1080p, and the upscaling algorithm with my 4K display (not sure where in the chain that happens, monitor or phone) was quite terrible to the point of text legibility being a concern.
The usage experience otherwise is quite good, it's perhaps my preferred way to sync data to and from my phone, I have it all stored on a NAS so I connect to my Type-C display (which has keyboard, mouse, and ethernet connected to its switch), fire up a terminal, type in my rsync commands, and my pictures & music are synced ~instantly at LAN speeds.
Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks
#350Is there really a reason to get excited about this? When we look at the path they took with Android on the phones, why should we believe that they will be any different from Microsoft on the desktop?
It is relatively easy to make a secure OS. What is terribly expensive in developer labor is a secure OS that runs a mainstream browser well. Android is an open-source OS that runs a mainstream browser well and is about 100 times more secure than any other open-source Linux distro -- except ChromiumOS. But for some reason, no vibrant open-source project ever formed around ChromiumOS whereas a vibrant open-source project (namely GrapheneOS) has formed around the Android open-source project.