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The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from using any banking app

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Re: The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from using any banking app

#351

Post by kakacik »

LoganDark wrote: post #340
sneak wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not an evil at all. For 99% of people who aren’t “computer people”, when we gave them that, we got the Bonzai Buddy and 47 other malware toolbars installed. Did we forget 2003 already? App sandboxing and system file integrity is one of the most beneficial security features of modern computing, and the vast majority of people have no desire to turn it off. You can buy rootable phones. People overwhelmingly choose…

The problem is mostly that normal people can't be trusted with system-level access but some people can. And it's literally, provably not possible to tell them apart. For the masses, lack of system-level access is a benefit because they won't be able to ruin their device. For hackers and hobbyists, lack of system-level access is a hindrance because they won't be able to control their device.

Non-ideal situation for those power users - have 2 phones. Annoying but also a perfect separation of free/personal and controlled/official spaces.

Re: The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from using any banking app

#352

Post by shimman »

fuzzzerd wrote: post #257
EvanAnderson wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyperbolic take - There won't be PCs, as we know them, for too much longer (both by way of being made into walled garden phone-like "appliances" by software, and by the hardware becoming unavailable).

I hate that future so much, but I don't know what to do to avoid it. My sole choice to bank on pc and use it as a pc will not be considered by the product people making the choice to go smart phone app only. I'm essentially along for the ride because the masses will gobble it up.

You do realize you have the power to organize with other like minded individuals and exert political power right? You don't have to just sit around and "accept this fate." We still live in a democracy, you're allowed to have a say if you want to.

Re: The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from using any banking app

#353

Post by chrneu »

morshu9001 wrote: post #289
ecshafer wrote: post #119

When I used to work on the Vanguard authentication team, we blocked Vietnam from access because of too much fraud (not my choice). But it was funny because we had Vietnam based clients, so there were a couple HNW clients in the logs that you could see who would log in from Vietnam/Russia/Wherever, get blocked, open their vpn, then log in from England. This was a while back, but even then there was a push for things l…

When I was running a home server as a kid, I IP-blocked the entire continent of Asia because I was constantly getting pings, portscans, HTTP path guesses, SSH auth attempts, etc randomly from there. Of course I secured my stuff to the best of my knowledge, but I still didn't want that harassment cause 1. who knows 2. could be ddos'd. When finding help on how to do this, people were saying it's useless cause they can…

lol you should see how bad it is nowadays. Like 90% of my traffic is from SE Asia or germany trying to scrape my site. I blocked like a dozen countries because of it. Singapore itself is an insane amount of traffic for me.

Re: The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from using any banking app

#354

Post by adrr »

Ritewut wrote: post #299
adrr wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what data? Curious because I built and launched a challenger bank.

What app developers find most valuable is what other apps you use and what competitors apps you have so they can target you more effectively. If you have Peloton or Tonal, they want to know if you have the Strava app on your phone for example.

Only on older versions of Android. Apps are very locked down on what you can get. I would have loved to be able to fingerprint a device when i was at the challenger bank and application list is very good for fingerprinting.. We would fingerprint on the web to detect bots.

Re: The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from using any banking app

#355

Post by BeetleB »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #214
BeetleB wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny - in some ways I have the opposite. In my version: The iPhone SE would be the one I use for calls, SMS, etc. It has the SIM card. The Pixel 9a would be used for everything I don't need a data plan/SIM card (browsing etc). My needs are a bit different from yours. I like to separate telephony and communication (i.e. WhatsApp, SMS) from everything else. This way, if I want quiet, I just turn that phone to airplane…

Or you could just turn on Do Not Disturb…

More painful to manage turning it on/off than to simply leave it in my car.

Over the years, I've spent far too much time with different solutions for managing notifications, etc. Turns out simply keeping the older phone after buying a newer one was the easiest approach. No downsides so far. The old phone has the SIM card. The new one doesn't.

Re: The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from using any banking app

#356

Post by Magnusmaster »

superkuh wrote: post #6

Smart phones are not personal computers. They're shopping/government/etc terminals. You don't and never have controlled them, even with root (re: tight integration of the baseband computer which only the telco has a license for, not you). Their best use re: computing is acting as wifi hotspot for their cell telco CNAT connection. The time to stop using them as computers is now, not when your local government passes t…

You don't own your PC either. All modern PCs have a Trusted Platform Module that the authorities can and will use to lock down PCs eventually. Multiplayer games are already using hardware attestation on PC for anti-cheat.

Re: The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from using any banking app

#357

Post by Magnusmaster »

Aleklart wrote: post #44

Of course if you have root, you can make other programs work as you please. They need to go further to outlaw hide root apps, and then install special app to track the status of the phone to make sure it is not rooted. Then allow police to randomly check the presence of this app on people phones. Every phone needs to be registered and pass hardware inspection every year. Even better, make so called offices where peop…

They won't need to do that. Once Google Play Integrity starts using remotely provisioned keys in a few years it will be impossible to hide root without exploiting a hardware or firmware vulnerability.

Re: The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from using any banking app

#358

Post by Magnusmaster »

snackbroken wrote: post #221
OutOfHere wrote: post #111

Why can't rooted phones pretend to be non-rooted phones for the purpose of certain apps? What's the point of rooting if you can't even selectively pretend?

Because root is not the ultimate authority of what goes on in the phone; the hardware is, and the hardware contains a TPM (Treacherous Platform Module). The TPM has secret cryptographic keys it never shares with anyone, neither root nor an unrooted OS. When the phone starts, the TPM checks if the OS has been modified from what the manufacturer supplies or not. The bank's app can then ask the OS to sign documents usin…

To avoid confusion, the actual name is Trusted Platform Module.

Re: The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from using any banking app

#359

Post by yason »

Problem is that banks place a lot of trust on a locked-down phone and I have a hard time trusting a blackbox device I don't really own but only paid for.

That's the reason I mostly use online banking on the web, not on a device.

If it ever comes to that in my country I can also use my previous, unrooted backup phone to host these apps and keep it at home.

I'm not at all thrilled of the idea of carrying your credentials to your bank account on your phone, accessible via a 4-digit PIN out there in the world in the first place. For some reason, banks think it's great.

Re: The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from using any banking app

#360

Post by GabrielHawk »

hephaes7us wrote: post #347
LoganDark wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is mostly that normal people can't be trusted with system-level access but some people can. And it's literally, provably not possible to tell them apart. For the masses, lack of system-level access is a benefit because they won't be able to ruin their device. For hackers and hobbyists, lack of system-level access is a hindrance because they won't be able to control their device.

In other areas of life, people self-select at their own risk. You can diagnose medical issues yourself, buy power tools you don't know how to use safely, and invest in assets that you don't understand. All other things being equal, we should try to protect people. But we shouldn't force everyone to make the choices that are best for the people with the least comprehension of what they're doing.

Have you ever seen government officials talk about tech? I think you'd have to be naive to buy the narrative that they're making such a large policy decision for our security.

Of the few people using rooted phones to begin with, there's even fewer that don't know what they're doing.

Much more likely is this is a decision to get in line with the well documented and rapidly spreading surveillance laws of the past few years.

> But we shouldn't force everyone to make the choices that are best for the people with the least comprehension of what they're doing.

You are acting like it's easy to accidentally root your phone

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