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Mar 14, 2020

Google is really playing a bad game. However, as this is clearly an abuse of dominant position (80% of the mobile market with ##Android) this is clearly the best path for their dismantlement.

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Christine Hall

@BrideOfLinux

Mar 14, 2020

This sucks: Some apps may stop working on rooted Android phones due to SafetyNet update buff.ly/2TZOeHR

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Those apps are choosing to depend on Play Services and use SafetyNet attestation to verify that it's a certified release without tampering. The issue is ultimately apps choosing to do that not Google improving SafetyNet attestation to make it less trivial for attackers to bypass.

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Users should hav the option to choose what to do with their devices, which apps / processes should have what privileges. Taking this decision from the users is not a solution. #FreeTheSandbox

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Do you want to take away the ability for users to use hardware-based security apps like Auditor? attestation.app/about Users should choose to avoid apps implementing DRM rather than taking away an important hardware-based security feature for protecting users and devices.

attestation.app

Auditor overview

Overview of the Auditor Android app and associated service.

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Letting users have the option to grant special privileges to specific apps or processes doesn't mean that the device is compromised or cannot use together with Auditor

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Auditor can only support OSes leaving the security model for attestation and verified boot intact. If there's a way to grant root access to the application layer, that's not compatible with the security model. Verified boot accomplishes little if persistence as root is supported.

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Granting the ability to tamper with the core operating system and other applications breaks the security model for verified boot. There has to be a verified core OS not trusting the persistent state (including applications and their permissions) for the security model to work.

4:30 AM · Mar 15, 2020Twitter Web App

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The hardware-based attestation provides basic information on verified boot state, patch level, etc. The hardware-based attestation feature supports chaining trust through the OS to the app and for that to be meaningful it has to protect Auditor from tampering by other apps, etc.

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The foundation of Auditor is that an attacker can't fake the hardware-based attestation information without exploiting the bootloader or secure element (or the TEE on lesser devices). OS level checks are given meaning by the hardware-based portion providing the patch level.

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