this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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Technology

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cross-posted from: https://lemy.lol/post/25062075

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[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

While I agree with you, the first step for user centric Android flavors regarding security is to support relocking the bootloader, with a custom (preferably the user's own) digital signature. As long as we dont have that, an attacker could flash or just boot a custom bootloader through fastboot that does its own thing.

However that doesn't really depend on Android system developers, I think, as the problem arises from the inferiority of almost every phone's bootloader (chain) (because most phones does not support setting up a custom signature for bootloader verification), and probably that can only be reasonably solved by device manufacturers, because as I understand, bootloaders do a lot of heavily device specific things, so there cant really be a common (primary) bootloader, and making one for each phone is a lot of work that also involves lots of reverse engineering, and maybe the early bootloaders cant even be overwritten on some phones..

[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's kind of both Google's and manufacturers responsibility. Google has made available a Dynamic System Updates feature:

https://source.android.com/docs/core/ota/dynamic-system-updates

https://developer.android.com/topic/dsu

...but it requires manufacturer support to allow adding custom keys.

[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 2 points 5 months ago

Hmm, this is interesting, it looks like if it was a multiboot solution