this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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Yes that's the benefit of verified boot, and it is a helpful security feature. However, if you've used or are using Windows or Linux as an operating system, then you are comfortable with using a device that does not have verified boot (not sure about iOS and Mac, I'm not familiar with them). The risk you're talking about with malicious code being injected in to an app you've chosen to trust is a threat to any device, verified boot or not. Modification of the kernel is an attack vector, but it certainly isn't the only way for an app to cause mischief on your phone and devices are all relatively as vulnerable to developer or supply chain attacks.
Using software someone else developed always comes down to trust, unless you are auditing the code for every app you use, which I don't think either you or I are. Having features that increase security in some technical way feels good but may lull us a sense of security. For instance, here's a quote from a security researcher that I ran across in the past. It's regarding the reputation for security that iOS has:
The same is true for us users. Security features are important, but user education and awareness is the most important element of keeping ourselves from 'making bad decisions and opening up security vulnerabilities' in our device usage.
Thankfully like you said, there are thousands of highly qualified individuals vetting the code of mainstream open source projects, which saves us regular users in the case we face an xz situation. A few principles that outway security features like verified boot in my book are:
Unless you are being targeted by a stalker, a malicious state actor or are downloading disreputable software, the average user (with a little bit of knowledge) would be just fine on /e/ or lineageOS. Tens of thousands of people are right now without any problems.
Ok, understandable. I hate mobile devices because of their limited usable life and limited OS compatiblity. Verified boot is nice, libre-android is better. Not worth it for a person of interest to install /e/OS, but neither would stock Android or AOSP without significant hardening. DivestOS is my top pick for degoogled Android, but as I learn more (been reading kicksecure's wiki on mobile device security) maybe Root isn't as bad as I thought for security. I trust Kicksecure's security research because of their significance as the base OS for Whonix and Whonix-qubes.
Me too, the mobile device landscape is definitely shaped by consumerist values. Divest has been intriguing me lately as well, I used to think it was a more flexible, less hardened alternative to Graphene, but it seems to have continued on down the road a ways past Graphene now. That wiki looks super interesting, I'm going to check it out. Just a quick look through what they have looks like high quality info.
I very much recommend Kicksecure hardened Debian as a daily driver. Eventually I will test gaming on Kicksecure making use of the steam flatpak, but I currently dont have the time.
IIRC, there is a way to force hardened_malloc for flatpaks, but this breaks many flatpak applications. For another hardened by default OS distromorph (the process of turning one distro into another closely related derivative OS) check out secureblue