They 100% would stop you if they could.
It’s why Google’s website DRM thing was so scary.
Was? What did I miss? Even if it was discarded, there will aways be another attempt.
Basically Google wanted to put checksums in webpages and then not render the page period if the checksum didn’t match and said checksum could only be verified by “approved” browsers that had the correct certificate (which surprise was Chromium only browsers such as Chrome and probably Edge). As such you wouldn’t have been able to run any adblockers as that would change the checksum and the way the page was rendered. They could also then go one step further and do a Denouvo type set up to make sure the OS wasn’t being altered.
Okay, so I originally was going to go in a long rant about how they’re still doing it, but decided that it didn’t really add much to the comment, so removed it.
Afaik they’ve, for now at least, shelved it in browsers, but are still going ahead in Android webviews (as part of their war on Youtube Vanced).
I actually heard something about that in class not long ago
The story is that Android’s security heavily relies on the compartmentalization of apps that lives in the android layer, over the Linux kernel. Apparently, that functionality works in part because only this layer can perform operations that require root access, no app or user can. So software that allows you to root your phone apparently breaks this requirement, and makes the whole OS insecure. He even heavily implied that one should never root their phone with ‘free’ software found on the internet because that was usually a front for some nefarious shit regarding your data.
I’m just parroting a half-understood and half-remebered speech from a security expert. His credentials were impressive but I have no ability to judge that critically, if anyone knows more about this feel free to correct me.
Isn’t saying that allowing apps to have root lets them access anything just describing what root is? A rooted phone doesn’t have to give superuser access to every app.
A rooted phone doesn’t have to give superuser access to every app.
Sure, but apps that run as superuser can access anything, including the data and memory for banking apps. A big part of Android’s security model is that each app runs as a different user and can’t touch data that’s exclusively owned by another user.
It just means you need to trust apps that you give root access to, or only give elevated privileges during the very specific times when apps need them. Root isn’t something people who don’t know what they’re doing should be messing around with, I guess. But I’d think a lot of people who root their phone know and accept the risks.
I think he was trying to say apps get access to “root features” through an abstraction layer/API calls that is controlled.
They don’t/wouldn’t have carte blanche root access to the underlying system. It’s kinda like a docker container or VM or flatpaks/snap packages on Linux. They are sandboxed from everything else and have to be given explicit premission to do certain things(anything that would need root privileges/hardware access).
I wouldn’t even feel compelled to root my phones if Google would actually back up my phone instead of whatever 1/4 baked shit they’ve done thus far.
I’ve been using android since 2010, and it’s gotten significantly better over the years. There’s only a few things it doesn’t back up, like text messages and app data, most of which you don’t need.
It is not Android that is backing up most things though, it is mostly done by Google Services. That means that your data is effectively vendor locked-in if you want to use Android as an actual open source project. Google gutting the AOSP to this extent should be illegal (maybe even is, but might is right).
Because they want to “protect” you from “yourself”. Imagine, you could scrape your own data that you can already see.
I’d be really worried if the security of server operation for my bank depended on the client-side. But playing devils advocate, some people will most likely point out that a root exploit on a phone may be unintentional and used to spy on people, to which I answer:
- show me a big scary box where I can “accept the risk” and move on
- keep in mind that if I am root on my phone, I can hide the fact that I am root on my phone and you’ll be none the wiser
Currently, option 2 is in effect, sadly.
The issue with option one is that scammers get old (or not technical) people to do stuff when they don’t know what they’re doing and click the box not knowing what they just did. So yes very frequently they need to protect people from themselves because they’re dumb, but I still expect banks to do business with those dumb people, sooo… Option 2 it is.
I think I just figured it out, hang on with me.
It’d be the tech literate person in the family. The nephew that’s working as a programmer or something like that. Now, if that nephew has some interest in stealing their uncles money, they now have access to their bank account through a freely rooted phone.
This gives them a lot of options, which I don’t have to explain.
Given that a lot of scams actually happen between presumed family and friends…
Yeah I kinda get why banks are doing this
You deftly evaded the leading attack vector: social engineering. Root access means any app installed could potentially access sensitive banking. People really are sheep and need to be protected from themselves, in information security just like in anywhere else.
You don’t get a “accept the risk” button because people don’t actually take responsibility, or will click on those things without understanding the risk. Dunning Kruger at play.
Why is this prevalent on Android but not desktop Linux? Most likely a combination of 1) Google made it trivially easy to turn on, and 2) the market share of Android is significantly large enough to make it a problem warranting a solution.
The fact that you know how to circumvent it is inconsequential to the math above. Spoiler: you never were nor ever will be the demographic for these products, in their design, testing, and feature prioritisation.
Root access means any app installed could potentially access sensitive banking
That’s not how it work. Having a rooted phone does not turn it into a digital farwest were every application can do anything. It becomes a permission like everything else; if you only grant it to safe stuff (like, for example, not granting root to a single app but using it to customize your phone through ADB), there’s not much to see here.
The word “potentially” was critical in the parent’s comment. A banking app cannot be assured that other apps are prevented from accessing its data when the phone is rooted.
The reason is very simple: They rely on Google Safetynet (basically self-diagnosis). And that will immediately tell you off if it notices your device is rooted. And while you can have a lengthy discussion regarding whether this makes your phone less secure or not, this is another simple argument from Google’s POV: The device has obviously been tampered with, we don’t want to put any resources into covering this case. As far as we are concerned, you shouldn’t use our OS like this.
So basically laziness.
SafetyNet is dead.
They rely on Play Integrity API.
That covers:
App Binary signatures App source corroboration - Was it actually installed from the Play Store? Android device attestation - Is it a genuine device powered by Google Play Services Malware detection - Google Play Protect is enabled and has not seen known malware signatures.
They can choose to ignore any number of those but they do not. It’s part of their security reporting requirements to use attestation I expect.
Beyond that - a device that doesn’t meet Play Integrity is more likely to be a malicious actor than it is to be a tech enthusiast with a rooted phone: One of them is far more prevalent than the other in terms of device usage.
Android apps are trivial to reverse engineer, inject code into and generally manipulate. That lets apps like ReVanced work the way they do… but that also means that blue team developers have a lot more work to do to protect app code.
Source - Android App Developer, worked on apps with high level security audits (like banking apps).
The banking apps I’ve tried don’t require SafetyNet, instead they use Android AOSP’s basicIntegrity. The latter doesn’t require certification by Google, but also checks whether the device is rooted and the bootloader is locked.
This means custom ROM’s on most devices won’t pass basicIntegrity, as only Google Pixel, OnePlus and Fairphone allow for relocking the bootloader.
That’s a bummer. Seems like Google Pixel and Fairphone are the only ones left. I don’t even know why manufacturers wouldn’t allow for relocking or even unlocking of their phones. I can’t imagine they make much money with user data and the phone is already paid for. Warranty claims shouldn’t be much of an issue either, as modifications can be easily detected and it’s likely not a relevant amount of people anyway.
Banks when you use browser 3 years of updates behind on Windows XP with multiple unpatched CPU vulnerabilities:
