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The days of custom Android ROMs are numbered, and Google is to blame (www.androidauthority.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/android@lemdro.id
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[–] 15 points 1 year ago (33 children)

Would you care to elaborate with specific examples?

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  • [+] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (18 children)
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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Yeah, I though of those two & it's just a thing that would get/will get developed if we get to daily drive Linux phones, imho.

    Its not like it didn't take Android years to get those two aspects covered.

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  • [+] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 child)
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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago*

    Didn't know/remember about KitKat verified boot, but the sandboxing thing was prob just to kernel & perhaps some system files, def not user or hardware such as cameras. Including between apps & phone contacts, etc.

    And I totally agree about lack of Linux phones (as hardware), the phone market with its size & megacorp subsidies to preinstall spybloatware is a giant hurdle.

    And the real reason for closed sauce drivers (as a practice, not as if they should open-sauce old hardware now - that's a security risk for unsuspecting folk & iot ... but we could def transition the practice).

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (13 children)

    There's no "mobile Linux". Linux supports Secure Boot just fine, and if a distro wants to sandbox applications that too is done by just configuring Linux to do so (after all, that's what Android does).

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  • [+] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (7 children)
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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Why? That has nothing to do with the topic we're discussing. You can configure Linux as Android does it, or choose not to.

    (Secure Boot is what enables "Verified boot" - which is just Android's name for a common sense secure boot loader implementation which is the norm in well protected IoT systems etc)

    /ex Sony Mobile dev, nowadays IoT hw/fw ethical hacker

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Android boots in layers that are encrypted with different keys. The first key in the TPM enlocks the base OS up to the lock screen. From there a pin is entered and the rest of the system is decrypted.

    If a compromise happened in the OS the phone would just fail to boot since the integrity of the system is validated by the TPM.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Yes, that's how a normal bootchain works in every system ever - like the IoT device running Linux I'm right now working with.

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  • [+] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)
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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Linux does not suck on phones regarding security. Linux is what brings the security mechanisms faulty ascribed to as being "Android's". See previous posters claiming it was all "extensive modifications" by Android and not just Linux security mechanisms.

    Feel free to get a Fairphone 4, sign your Ubuntu Touch image with keys supported by the chipset and off you go. The fact that no one is selling you that has no relevance whatsoever to whether "Linux" supports it.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Linux doesn't have the same permission controls. SElinux profiles would need to be manually configured for each app which would take a lot of time.

    Mobile linux also doesn't support measured boot which is what is used to protect the system in the case of theft. Before I consider mobile Linux it would be nice if there was a detailed security review of the entire system.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I think this will sort itself out quicker if you show me what "mobile linux" is.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Ubuntu Touch, Postmarket OS and others

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    The mobile linux tends to leave root access enabled plus it doesn't sandbox apps in the same way as Android. If you visit a web page that manages to exploit your web browser all bets are off since lateral movement is trivial inside the OS.

    Android on the other hand has strong sandboxing and permission control which means that a compromise in one place shouldn't be able to jump to other places. Android also restricts filesystem access so even if an app is compromised it is difficult to maintain persistence.

    Phones has lots of sensors and are great for tracking people. I would rather that my phones OS be extremely secure so that I'm not the victim of spyware.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    One thing Google seems to be able to do right is security. Android has a strong security architecture that is highly robust. You can straight up download malware or lose your phone and everything stays safe.

    I'm not saying it would be impossible to create a OS that is as secure as Android. However, it would take some very serious work and would likely mean building something from scratch with APIs for permission requests.

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  • [+] -10 points 1 year ago (13 children)

    Do you have examples where that isn't the case?

    Linux phones tend to just be the desktop versions of desktops adapted for a smaller screen.

    Android has well built ecosystem with strong privacy and security features not really found anywhere else. The entire system focuses on least privilege with strong security isolation so even if you do download something bad it will have a hard time doing real damage.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Errrrmmmm I think this is just an issue either with your choice of distro or your approach to security.

    The Linux ecosystem has by far some of the greatest security technologies available for modern operating systems. Android is a Linux distribution after all.

    Most of the issues with Linux on a phone so far is more the hardware and architecture to support and integrate the hardware.

    Major mobile device manufacturers have secure enclaves, cryptographic co-processors, advanced face/depth cameras, fingerprint readers, etc. The system architecture needs to be tailored to the hardware and security architecture for the threat models mobile devices face that you want to mitigate.

    iOS is Unix deep under the hood, Android is Linux deep under the hood. The issues here aren’t with the kernels, they’re with userspace, hardware selection, and perhaps the odd supporting driver, service, or interface.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Current Linux doesn't come close to Android. I wish it did but you still need root access and permission controls leave something to be desired. I think that is mostly fine for desktop but on mobile the stakes are much higher since spyware could have much more access.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I’m not trying to be rude but none of these points are true. I imagine you’re confusing a single Linux distribution and their architecture with being representative of Linux as a whole. You can indeed spin an unprivileged, immutable distribution with SELinux for MAC, hardened kernel, and so much more, which would blow Android et al out of the water.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Source?

    I'm basing this all on the Android documentation along with my experience on desktop Linux. I would love if there was a Linux system that was as solid as Android but I haven't seen anything as of yet.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Build it. Gentoo, Arch, and any other minimalist distro where there’s less userspace fluff out of the box can easily be configured to be incredibly hardened.

    Your looking for a desktop distribution that doesn’t really exist out of the box (perhaps Qubes). Android is a mobile OS for a reason and has a different architecture in userspace to accommodate for is threat model and use cases.

    Just because desktop distros don’t typically lock down userspace out of the box doesn’t mean it’s not possible.

    Edit: Here’s some examples:
    Plague Kernel
    Hardened Arch Linux
    SELinux for MAC
    Kernel lockdown
    Immutable distro BlendOS
    Bubblewrap sandboxing
    Firejail sandbox leveraging hardened malloc
    Hardened Alpine Linux

    I don’t think there’s a distro that goes as hard as mobile except maybe some based on flatpaks rather than package repos of libs and bins. But you can piece your own together based on your requirements and personal threat model.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Android is Linux, and uses regular Linux security mechanisms.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    That's not the case. Android is extensively modified in order to have sandboxed applications only and restrictive hardware permissions.

    Run any executable on Linux. Likely by default it can access ~/Photos and the webcam. Android doesn't allow that

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Flatpak?
    And some level of immutability?

    It doesn't seem like much of a step for Linux distros to cover the "gap" if/when we get any sort of viable mobile options for eg 1% of the market.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Flatpak has promise but the sandbox much weaker than Android. I wouldn't run anything untrusted with it as sandbox escapes are likely possible. Bubblewrap is highly portable at the cost of being less secure. Kernel level sandboxing such as SElinux and Namespaces are much more bulletproof since they leverage the kernel.

    Honestly if you are building something from the ground up I would instead focus on virtualization since the Linux kernel isn't exactly free of security issues.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    "uses regular Linux security mechanisms" is true regardless of whether any distributions you use configure them the same way or not.

    The Android platform takes advantage of the Linux user-based protection to identify and isolate app resources.

    As part of the Android security model, Android uses Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) to enforce mandatory access control (MAC) over all processes, even processes running with root or superuser privileges (Linux capabilities).

    https://source.android.com/docs/security/features

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