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

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

xdaforums.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 643 posts

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

#491

Post by keybored »

kube-system wrote: post #317
ryandrake wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to act now, while there are still service providers that don't require a phone. If my bank said they wouldn't do business with me unless I used a phone and an app, I would immediately take my business and all my accounts to a different bank. Banks have no moat. You can pretty easily move accounts to a different one or to a credit union who won't abuse you.

You and the four other people who might do this are just delaying the inevitable.

Or they’re arguing with like four FUD contrarians on a website.

No no no shut up, don’t speak up. No one thinks like you.

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

#493

Post by gonzalohm »

gcuvyvtvv6 wrote: post #477
gonzalohm wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just use your bank's website. No need for two phones

My bank turned their website off. Mobile app only now.

Really? And you are okay with losing access to your money if your phone is lost/stolen?

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

#494

Post by attila-lendvai »

grugdev42 wrote: post #9

Serious question, what is gained from this move? Why would a government care? Are rooted phones really that much of a problem? Surely most people running a rooted phone are tech enthusiasts. Cybercriminals will just use regular phones bought under false names and dispose of them afterwards.

it's not about rooted or not, but rather who controls what OS you run.

and that's enormous power for those who want to centralize power into their hands.

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

#495

Post by [deleted] »

sgc wrote: post #349

Security question: Could we have the same level of security - or very close to it - from requiring a secure enclave like a vm running on the device for banking apps with hardware passthrough, or would there be no way for that vm to verify it has actual hardware passthrough and that it's not being tampered with? That way you would just get the entire vm with the app from the Play Store or Apple, and nobody needs to wo…

[deleted]

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

#496

Post by attila-lendvai »

TZubiri wrote: post #102
fenaer wrote: post #20

Unfortunately the answer here is to not abide by the law. If there is a reasonable way to bypass this (as the cat-and-mouse game always seems to continue), and there is reasonable expectation to not be caught, then I see no moral quandary with ignoring such a consumer-hostile rule.

I'm assuming you would do this out of a political reason, or as a very technical and privacy aware user. But you are providing an alibi for malicious users who, for example, might try to brute force logins from unidentified devices. That would be one reason aside from the law. You are essentially positioning yourself on the same side as intruders.

aka guilty until proven innocent.

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

#497

Post by lxgr »

nine_k wrote: post #479
lxgr wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone will need at least a cheap-ish android or iphone, perhaps $300 No, the much more secure while at the same time liberty-preserving way to do this are heavily sandboxed secure enclaves with attestation, or even better standalone tamper-proof devices capable of attestation. Like the ones practically every bank customer already has in their wallet, and for which most phones have a built-in reader these days...…

I don't see how a separate dedicated piece of hardware is less secure. It has zero contact whatsoever with your other comm devices. It can be switched off when not needed, to prevent any chance of tracking you. Think of it as of an advanced yubikey. It's not money-preserving though. You need an extra device, and an extra phone number. The separate phone number is another privacy-preserving feature though.

> Think of it as of an advanced yubikey.

A cheap Android phone is pretty much the opposite of a Yubikey, in terms of trusted computing base and attack surface.

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

#498

Post by graemep »

chrneu wrote: post #350
graemep wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also interesting that yet another government is prepared to increase its reliance on American big tech. I do not know whether Vietnam has any pretence of digital sovereignty, but many countries that do are doing this like this to actively move away from it.

isnt europe basically going through this trying to decouple itself from AWS and Azure and other american tech?

Where in Europe? Some countries are making some efforts to get away from cloud providers like those but all I know of are increasing dependency on Apple and Android.

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

#499

Post by greentea23 »

There are a million legitimate reasons to root a phone (e.g. preserving the battery to minimize e-waste, blocking malicious trackers often allowed by Apple and Google, innovating on the UI, etc.). Apple/Google/Microsoft are run by uninspired, uncreative, and immoral people, and there is a world of innovation and forward thinking we lose out on by letting them rule our tech.

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

#500

Post by nunez »

As a person who was super into the rooting scene before getting iPhone-pilled in 2018 or so, I can see both sides to this issue.

On one hand, people that jump through the crazy hoops phone manufacthrers put up to get root are either technically-proficient or willing to become so and are, usually, responsible enough to keep their devices locked down and secure.

On the other hand, banks are subjected to literally all of the regulations, and breaking any of them usually incurs unbelieveable fines. Given that phones are the default computing device for most people these days and how (relatively) easily secrets can be extracted from rooted devices, blanket-banning them makes a lot of sense.

Nonetheless, modern Android is just as locked down as modern iOS, with a few exceptions (like adb access) and without the awesome hardware and software optimizations for that hardware that make video recording fast and web browsing even faster. Between this and nobody having a real answer to Apple Watch, I'll be an iOS stan for the foreseeable future.

Post reply on HN