Hi,
The general consensus amongst the Android community is that rooting is detrimental to privacy. In a sense, I agree with them since privilege escalation because of human error becomes a much bigger threat if the user has root access.
Android has a big privacy problem encapsulated in one word: “baseband”. Your modem and other hardware running in your device don’t run FOSS firmware and are likely actively malicious towards your privacy.
I am a Linux user, and I understand that concepts do not necessarily transfer well between the two. With that in mind:
- If I wanted to be absolutely certain that sensistive hardware like Camera, Microphone and Modem were truly off, would shutting them off as root hold any real significance?
- I do not know what the equivalent of Intel ME is called in the Android space, but I doubt that a highly complex OS is running beneath general Android as we know it. I think it’s just the firmware of the individual device that we need to worry about.
- Is it possible to replace the bootloader on some Android devices/prevent it from loading unwanted firmware?
With Google taking Android behind closed doors, I suspect we will start seeing some suspicious snippets of code here and there with questionable purpose, but which might be missed by FOSS volunteers because of the sheer volume of work that is. I’m thinking of ways we can try to evade this blatant grab of our personal data.
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I may have misunderstood, but Google isn’t doing Android behind closed doors; it’s just development. The released versions will still be as open as they are now, as far as I’ve understood.
i think OP is implying the extra time that will be needed on foss volunteers part to review the code at the time [edit: ‘of’] release.
it’s like pouring liquid into a flimsy plastic cup. drop by drop, the cup can handle it. pour a lot all at once and the cup may tip over and spill.
This is setting Google up to eventually say “Aw shucks, might as well make it proprietary, we’re doing it in-house anyway”.
Edit: I can’t believe this comment got downvoted. I wish I could see who the Google SIMPs are in this community
Long live the Linux phone.
None of them usable
I bought a Linux phone back in 2015 (BQ Aquaris 5 running Ubuntu Touch) and even back then with the flagrant lack of apps the phone was usable
Are you able to run banking and chat apps?
You can still use cash & websites for banking tasks. You chat should be on an open source protocol so there is bound to be an application or web app for that too.
2FA won’t work as well for banking. Unfortunately, family is still on WhatsApp
I don’t have that phone anymore but I used WebApps for banking and chatting and they worked well. Now their app store is much much bigger though.
If you want to run full Foss system then there is pinephone with Linux OS and physical switches to turn off camera and microphone and other stuff. But it is still in very very early stage and it may increase your privacy but it will definitely reduce your security.
I understand camera and microphone access to malicious actor could be a valuable. But if you think your phone’s camera is compromised you have bigger problems.
That being said, graphene OS is considered by far the most secure android OS. It has features to turn off camera, mic, sensors. But more importantly it has a lot of additional security features making it harder for anyone to break in. And that using Graphene is or any other is doesn’t directly make you secure.
Yes I can agree to assume baseband and all the other proprietary firmware is running a malicious code. But they can’t use it to do mass surveillance, because if they do someone will detect it sooner or later. And also this is not the right tool for mass surveillance. 99% people will and have already downloaded apps that track almost everything they do.
And if your threat model requires you to be safe from malicious firmware, then maybe smart phones aren’t for you.
The general consensus amongst the Android community is that rooting is detrimental to privacy. In a sense, I agree with them since privilege escalation because of human error becomes a much bigger threat if the user has root access.
No, that’s BS. It entirely depends on your “threat model” just like security.
Namely if you go full OSHW/FLOSS and yet you volunteer your data on Facebook.com (or whatever that website is called today) then you have no privacy. It’s not a technical problem, it’s a behavior problem.
If your threat model is about government hiring dedicated staff to know what you are up to, or that the infrastructure you rely is can’t be trusted, then rooting is the last of your problems.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t worry but I don’t see the relevance of rooting Android in that situation. Root or not does not somehow change how your modem behaves, you’re still at the mercy of the drivers.
I recommend you check projects like Precursor (at https://precursor.dev/ redirecting to the CrowdSupply page) which try to tackle, if I understood correctly, the kind of worry you have, namely actually understand the entire stack.
That being said, even in such context, you still rely on some infrastructure to relay messages to others so you need that and the recipients to also respect your privacy. If not (which would be a fair assumption) then at least you must understand the cryptographic primitives you rely on… and if you don’t (which most people don’t, me included despite my interest in the mathematics behind that, in particular one-way functions) then you have to some trust in the public research in the domain.
So… I do have a Precursor, tinker with it, PinePhone and PinePhone Pro, had an iOS phone until recently, switched to (rooted) /e/OS and my personal position is that while interacting with others (and a mobile is 100% about that) one has to make pragmatic about their choices.
That’s some crazy stuff ! Being able to completely change/repair every part is something every smartphone should be capable off…
We are in a buy/throw away generation amidst a big climate change issue/rare ore depletion… That’s depressing.
