cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/15995282
Real unfortunate news for GrapheneOS users as Revolut has decided to ban the use of ‘non-google’ approved OSes. This is currently being posted about and updated by GrahpeneOS over at Bluesky for those who want to follow it more closely.
Edit: had to change the title, originally it said Uber too but I cannot find back to the source of ether that’s true or not…
I don’t think LOS has any privacy/security improvements over the stock android?
(IIRC) it’s even worse than stock because you can’t lock the bootloader after installation.
Though if your phone isn’t getting official updates, it’s probably safer with LOS.
There’s also the Lineage-based DivestOS that attempts to keep up with more security updates, and relocking the bootloader in phones that support it.
https://divestos.org/
Yeah, I myself am using CalyxOS, because DivestOS doesn’t support the Fairphone 5 unfortunately. CalyxOS also has relocking.
Calyx also comes with MicroG, right? So mitigates many problems with a bit more Google.
And Fairphone 4 here, partly for Divest (had it on Oneplus 6 before this and just used to it), partly because of a good deal for a barely used one.
(IMHO) CalyxOS is a good balance between security and usability. Better than LineageOS, worse than GrapheneOS (and DivestOS).
Amen to that. Everyone has their own balance point, Calyx seems to hit that for many.
Forgot to say that yes, CalyxOS does have microG, though you don’t need to log into Google to download apps from Aurora. Login is only required for apps from Google (like maps, gmail etc).
I also got the Fairphone 5 because of the used price! Mine was 300€ with a slightly burned in screen (it was used as a store display model), though I only notice it when on a completely white screen and looking for it.
Yup, it’s definitely worse https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/android.html#lineageos
Physical access is game over anyway?
Not with GrapheneOS, since you can entirely disable the USB controller from the settings on a driver level, making it impossible to connect the phone to a forensic data extraction device. GrapheneOS also has a convenient auto-reboot feature, which (together with their patches to the Linux kernel and Fastboot recovery OS to include memory zeroing) erases the encryption keys from memory, putting the device in BFU state and requiring the PIN/password to unlock. This is additionally secured by the Titan M2 secure element, which makes use of the Weaver API and drastically throttles brute-force unlock attempts. https://grapheneos.org/faq#encryption
Some cool features, wonder what backdoors google have put in the hardware
Those conspiracy theories often come up in discussions here on Lemmy, but the TLDR is: Google is a tiny player in the smartphone market, compared to vendors like Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, and others (https://www.statista.com/chart/25463/popularity-of-google-smartphones/). They also serve a much smaller geographical region than most other manufacturers. The Pixel 9 lineup, for example, is only sold in 32 countries. Most of those are wealthy industrial nations. Google doesn’t even try to assume market share in developing countries in Africa and Asia. It can also be assumed that over 97% of Google Pixel users keep the Stock Pixel OS, where Google doesn’t need a hardware backdoor since they can just implement it in software. So that leaves only a tiny fraction of all users: people in some wealthy industrial nation who specifically buy a Pixel to install a custom ROM. GrapheneOS for example has about 300K users. Do you really think Google would put in the effort to create a hardware backdoor and take all the risk associated with it (negative PR, loss of sales, etc.) just to collect some data about this tiny amount of users? Google already controls EVERY Android phone on the market by forcing vendors to include Google Play Services as a system application through their contracts, licensing and monopolistic market position. Be realistic for a second, and you will realize that your backdoor theories make absolutely no sense and that no business in the world would ever take such a huge risk with such little reward.
Bare in mind the chipset is the Google Tensor G4, they already had to design and build their own hardware. We don’t know everything it can do
Neither do we know this about any other CPU on the market. All chipsets on the market are proprietary. All of them. And no, despite many people (who don’t know anything about what they are talking about) claiming this, RISC-V won’t actually solve any of these issues. Sure, the ISA is open source, but the ISA would be the worst place for malicious actors to introduce a backdoor. I can guarantee you that despite using the RISC-V ISA, the chips themselves will still be fully proprietary and the IP will be highly protected as trade secrets. You can build a fully RISC-V conformant chip with a backdoor, there’s absolutely nothing in place that could stop this, and it surely won’t change for the forseeable future.
Yes
That’s a problem with the phone manufacturer, not with Lineage.
LineageOS itself drastically weakens security even compared to stock AOSP, for example by exposing root access or deploying insecure SELinux policies