The other proposed change (to restrict access to certain interfaces or IP addresses) seems good, but why not allow developers to restrict access localhost?
It reeks of trying to block Shizuku, Canta, etc. using a way that only makes it look like a side-effect.
When is this insanity going to stop? I really think the IT security industry ought to be ashamed of itself. Security has become a totalizing value that trumps every other value - convenience, user-friendliness, privacy, hackability, openness, just anything at all in the name of MORE SECURITY.
See Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
Not just that. A non-development Android build will also prompt the user when a connection is made to authorize the client's key.
This once again isn't about security of users, this is about security of the company's interests.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/eu-top-court-dismisses-google-...
That's why Trump's tariffs on everything was so ... Uh ... "Interesting". If only one party gets the tariffs, you end up with other parties selling the goods instead, which does cause meaningful damage to the tariffed party
The US should.
Then the judge pretty much decided “no consequences”.
Something like, "I'm worried about impairing Google's ability to compete in AI" or some nonsense. (Paraphrasing here.)
Looks like all it takes to compete in AI is to issue stock or get a bunch of investors. I don't see how Google would struggle with that. It's completely orthogonal to antitrust enforcement.
It depends on how you define a bad actor.
"rootless privacy tools based on Shizuku."
It's not for the security of the owner; it is for the security of the government.
Trusted execution environment applications like the EU Digital (Identity) Wallet, or whatever they will demand next to protect the children, heavily rely on the fact that users cannot mess with their devices or install unsanctioned software. We all know how badly the Intel SGX story is going.
In early days of this, I honestly think it was rooted in the famous Steve Jobs paranoia, the one that shipped without an app store and told users to use Safari, the same Steve Jobs that was said to not want certain medical devices during cancer treatment to touch him because they weren't beautifully designed. It was fundamentally about not wanting "dirty" things coming in contact with his "perfect" device. They dressed it up in language about security as a post hoc justification.
I remember in those days people would say they didn't want it to be like malware ridden Windows 98. But they omitted the weak security behind Windows at that time, which modern systems had long ago exceeded, even in the Windows world.
Along the lines of "Are you being asked to do this by someone else? Be cautious, as your device could become compromised."
"we will never ask for this over the phone" takes second place to:
"we will send/save you money/time if you make it convenient"
dress it up to taste like developer needs, and you can hook the newbies.
A measure needs to be in proportion to the actual risk it seeks to mitigate.
The introduction of Manifest V3 API in Chrome for extensions, and disabling Manifest V2 for security reasons. It just so happened that ad blockers were made incompatible with the Manifest V3 API. It's a little blatant considering this came right around the time that YouTube began showing warning messages to users with ad blockers...
Requiring developers to verify their apps via Google Play Developer Console and blocking any unverified APK installations. This is done in such a way that it just so happens to squash F-Droid and most FOSS apps for most people, and blocks any serious competition to Google Play or any apps they don't like.
Of course, there's all this talk about preventing malware, but it is a fact that if you download any random ringtone or PDF app on Google Play it's going to come with probably 25 trackers and send your data to every jurisdiction in the world, and many apps even fail to declare any of this via Google Play data safety or privacy policy. Let's not forget that spyware is a form of malware. Take a look at the leaderboard :) https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/list/?filte...
In my opinion, this would probably be an indication that maybe Google controls too much technology and that they may need to be broken up to ensure fair competition. For Christ's sake they almost broke up Microsoft not that long ago for shipping a browser with their operating system, and now Google is blatantly controlling the operating system, the platform and app store, the ecosystem, the browser, the ad network, and abusing their power over it however they can.
1. Enable Developer Mode by going to an obscure settings page and tapping the build number seven times
2. Enable USB ADB debugging in the Developer Options
3. Establish an actual USB ADB session
4. Enable TCP/IP ADB debugging in the Developer Options
5. Unknowingly download a malware app from the official Play Store
6. Blindly click "Yes" on the permission prompt.
In other words: this is all but impossible to impact regular users, and it requires a particularly careless developer to be hit by it. And it only works if the Play Store is useless at preventing malware in the first place - but I thought their excellent app scanning was the entire reasoning behind all-but-banning 3rd-party app stores and sideloading???
It is "for safety" in the same sense that governments banning all encryption is to "protect the children" or to "prevent terrorism": flawed justification invented to distract from the real reason they want it.
I'm not saying it's right to respond by simply locking everything down, but let's not downplay the blast radius of basically every attack that involves telling the user to do things.
I think the impulse for an OS vendor to try to make such mistakes impossible is about as wrong as selling knives dull so people can't hurt themselves. A knife that can't cut its user is useless as a knife.
Too far towards trying to make mistakes impossible (which is easy for corporations to talk themselves into because it also makes them money and moat) and you make devices useless. Too far towards full user control and you get difficulties in support and security issues (which are tractable if you’re an enthusiast, but not so much if you’re a normie on a corporate-maintained device).
Truthseeking here is further complicated by ordinary end users’ dislikes and usability issues not always overlapping.
Of course this isn’t true, the play store, and yes even the apple App Store to a lesser extent, is riddled with malware.
But what this demonstrates is that, clearly, Google doesn’t care too much about security or safety. It’s a pretense, not a goal. If it was a goal, they’d dump money into fixing the play store, but they won’t and they don’t.
So, we should be highly skeptical when they say something is for “safety” and “security”. At this point, it’s a lot like saying something is for “national security”.
That radius would be negligible should the things that must remain secret remain offline.
But no, that's a luddite thing to even think about in an all-connected ever-online world where even wiping one's ass is done via of a swarm of dedicated apps.
On the other hand, there has always been a way to extract secrets from a granny via a mere voice call, so no amount of dumbing it down would really help.
Have you ever worked with someone who barely knows how to use a mobile phone? They will hand their phone over to someone they barely even know to do something they don't understand. They will follow instructions from a stranger over the phone, without understanding what the phone is warning them about.
I have worked with such a person. They did have someone walk them through a dubious process. Thankfully they realized what was going on before the process was complete, but who knows how much damage was done by the initial steps.
There are legitimate security reasons here. Whether there are reasons beyond that is an open question.
“Large numbers of people will uncritically follow sketchy instructions and get hacked” doesn’t in any way lead to “and therefore they cannot be trusted with devices”.
“People keep dying in auto accidents” doesn’t imply “ban cars” on the first order, it implies “seat belts and airbags”.
People seem to be ok with needing a license to operate a motor vehicle and those are far less dangerous.
Which incidentally is often just a pretense for other motives?
If computers have suddenly become so dangerous for normal people, and they want smartphones nonetheless, add to them a dumb-mode encouraged at the initial setup, and requiring some third party assistance to turn it off once enabled..! (and forbid apps to change their behavior if it's not enabled)
Here's my article about that from 2021. It's for the devices sold in Russia, but this issue is worldwide: https://habr.com/ru/articles/575626/
And here's more detailed research of two particular devices: https://notes.valdikss.org.ru/trojan-digma/
Nothing is stopping the guy at Walmart or Tmobile from selling them dumbphones, or are you implying they are forced to?
Here is the first iPhone ad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bvfs4ai5XU
The ad depicts it as a mere phone instead of a potentially hostile Turing machine. There is equivalent messaging in the android ecosystem but its advertising is not so ubiquitous.
We could also imagine a 24h delay to get Play Store access with a modal to make them understand the risks.
https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ddos/glossary/aisuru-kim...
This is like saying that SSH is insecure because some device vendors install SSH, permitting root login with a default password of 'root'.
You can unlock it with additional free option.
But even then, shouldn't this show the same permission prompt for the user that anything else trying to connect to port 5555 would?
Not the least because most of our industry relies on it to make money. Marketing and advertising themselves are institutionalized forms of "do this thing that's actually harmful to you to get free coins / be safe / get laid".
I mean, this seems more like one of the root causes for a lot of bad things in the industry me...
- the app embedding the proxyware SDK for money
- the proxy operators
- the attackers/botnets using the proxy to access ADB.
The botnet has no access to the app, so it can't show any messages.
The app can show messages, but probably has no connection to the botnet. (I hope)
The proxy operators could show a message by abusing the SDK even more, but that would mean they actively colluded with the botnet. Is that likely? Then they could just give the botnet direct access to the app, no need to do the whole proxy thing.
It's one more revenue stream to be able to remote control real android phones to pass device attestation checks etc.
It's marketed to users with phrases like "earn money from your phone whilst you sleep".
That said, I wasn't under the impression kimwolf was that technically sophisticated. Some of the others are, though.
Ads and tracking, obviously (https://localmess.github.io/)
All these changes Google is doing to Android aren't for you as the user, they are to protect their business interests from the user.
This is a CVE by any definition and you'd be screaming your head off if any other OS would allow this kind of permission bypass (or even if another app did it).
But sure, Google evil.
I think a possibility of knowingly pushing the handlebar should be removed from me, just in case. After all I could do it.
And while we're at it I just realised my car has a similar vulnerability, but triggered by a slightly different mechanism, but the effect is exactly the same, I can crash into a pillar.
Edit: oops, I just discovered that if I have a banking app installed on my phone, then tap my screen in the specific places, enter several numbers, including the number I receive in text, suddenly I lose all the money.
That's staggering!
No technology prevents the crash, they just lower the chance of it happening accidentally (like, say, ABS or DCT). I can remove almost all of the guardrails on my bike choosing more aggressive riding mode.
Countermeasures to the accidentally allowing a malware to "do something" already exist and were described in the original article. The comment I was responding to wants a removal of the whole capability, hence my cases.
The CVE mentioned in the article is https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-0073. That's a real CVE: logic error leading to auth bypass. Fix can be seen at https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/modules/a....
Separately, a number of people here are attempting to argue that the availability of On-Device ADB should be regarded as a "CVE" in and of itself. Google does not appear to share that view.
This was proposed by a Google employee: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/526109803#comment3
> Connection to localhost has also been the source of exploit where app are using that socket to adbd to escalate their privileges. What about we restrict to always only binding to wifi interface wlan0 ?
Nowhere in that text do I see a proposal to assign an additional CVE for this behaviour. Personally I think it would be unusual to assign a CVE for intended-but-potentially-harmful functionality, although I expect people have done that in the past. But, I think overall we're agreeing here.
>Which OEM do not provide this feature? This hardly quality as a legitimate usecase but rather as a shortcoming of the OEM.
I find this kind of attitude maddening. Although I assume they overlooked "advanced" because as soon as I read that, I knew this wasn't going to be something ever supported as a basic functionality. I get that many people will be fine with simple things but I hate being forced into them.
Or perhaps they wouldn't? CVEs aren't holy scripture, and "security" isn't the most important consideration in computing. This theatre has gone too far IMO.
It's not like those threats silently turn on ADB on people's phones without their knowledge. You have to opt in to a rather obscure, hidden by default, and very fickle feature to become potentially vulnerable in the first place.
Your problem is with the last one which has nothing to do with the CVE itself.
That, and security maximalism displayed in 3. and some comments in the HN thread.
There are 3 things which I feel like are being confused here:
1. There was a genuine authentication bypass vulnerability in ADB (bad)
2. Initial proposed change wants to add an option to limit the ADB server to certain IPs or network interfaces (good - it doesn't affect you)
3. Response to the original request, proposing that ADB shouldn't be allowed to listen on loopback interfaces (bad/nefarious - it breaks functionality)
[1] https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-0073
[2] https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/526109803#comment1
[3] https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/526109803#comment3
allow [intransitive verb]: to make a possibility
I love how quickly you all forget about security and privacy when it gives a chance to angrily rant.
"An app can bypass OS security system with certain setting enabled" is absolutely a valid CVE. We have countless examples every day of vendor apps bypassing OS security systems because they're allowed to do so.
"A device can bypass protective layers and cause soft tissue damage when thrown" is an absolutely fine CVE, too.
Whether it matters or is something that should be addressed, is the depends part. Here we're talking about CVE that's at risk of trying to address a feature.
You are forgetting the most important questions of security, without which the whole discussion becomes pointless:
Who is securing what, and from who?
CVEs seem much less like holy writ when they're aimed at protecting the device for commercial interests and from the device owner.
Whether that means there's a _feature_ lacking there, is another question.
If the user chooses to free certain apps from restrictions, that should be their choice.
But if a piece of software overrides the users' choice, that certainly qualifies as a CVE.
This is an important distinction! The user must always have final say.
Whether an app breaks out of the sandbox and steals my vacation photos, or the OS sets new restrictions I can't remove, both are wrong.
Any piece of software has to act in service of the user, and ONLY the user. It must not do things or set restrictions without the users consent. No means no.
This is one of them
> In adbd_tls_verify_cert of auth.cpp, there is a possible bypass of wireless ADB mutual authentication due to a logic error in the code. This could lead to remote (proximal/adjacent) code execution as the shell user with no additional execution privileges needed.
Patch: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/modules/a...
Docs:
> EVP_PKEY_cmp() return 1 if the keys match, 0 if they don't match, -1 if the key types are different and -2 if the operation is not supported.
The original code cast the integer return value to boolean, and -1 and -2 cast to "true", therefore authentication would succeed if the key types were different or the operation wasn't supported.
Which is a problem only if the third party acquired those keys without your permission, but the industry decided to "fix it" regardless.
Now an application on my computer can obtain root without user interaction.
Where is my CVE?
So the password check really has no point. Typing sudo is still a lightweight sanity check, otherwise I may as well just log in as root.
Letting applications bypass permissions with this feature is the exact usecase they don't want to lose. If anything, I don't see them being against the original proposal possibly restricting non-loopback access, which would enhance security.
It is tech feudalism - you don't own anything anymore, you just get to live on the digital land of a bunch of ~trillion dollar companies.
At least, that is the goal.
IMO either everyone gets access at the user's discretion or Google has to sandbox their own GMS services as well.
Right now any app on my PC connected to ADB could manipulate my phone then, and that's somehow not a CVE?
If you are talking about allowing listening on localhost - remote ADB requires enabling in the developer settings. It is a developer feature, similar to ADB over USB. If I'm charitable, it is possible that they are seeing too many people that are using Shizuku without understanding the security implications. But Shizuku has a lot of useful applications and they use ADB because the Android APIs and permission system are lacking and do not make these applications possible.
It's like saying that the fact the user knows their own password is a vulnerability because they might enter it to log into their account.
seriously, get real, please explain how your train of thought works here
>Don’t even get me started on OEMs that force an audio warning such as “This call is being recorded,” when it’s in places where it’s not legally required.
This is also Google's fault. Their dialer--that OEMs increasingly pick over their own, despite their always being much better, see old MIUI one for example--just blanket applies the rule almost everywhere. Especially annoying on all MediaTek SoCs that do not support the feature on an hardware level at all through proper, reliable third-party applications. As if you didn't need any more proof you don't own "your" devices. But maybe in a couple years Gemini will be able to listen to the calls and summarize them for you, just need to go through the approved surveillance channel.
Can you install your own OS? If yes, you own it. And Google consistently lets you do that. It other OEMs don't then direct your outrage at them.
Not before connecting it to the internet, even Pixels will go through hundreds of megabytes of data before allowing you to unlock them (see 0). Also, will Google let me browse the web with "my own OS" without their proprietary services installed on it? (see 1) And without developers pouring tens of thousands of work hours into making projects such as GrapheneOS viable despite Google, you wouldn't even be able to do much that requires anything to do with SafetyNet and all successors delivered through Google Play Services, which is functionally the core component of any Android device for the near entirety of typical use-cases. And I'm not excusing OEMs, but they did not build their market share off of being "open" then start to close every door and trap you in it.
0. https://www.fitzsim.org/blog/?p=545
1. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/07/googles-new-remote-att...
What's the problem here? Are you roaming all the time and that imposes a unreasonable cost on you? You want to stay totally off the grid and using VPN/tor isn't enough?
>Also, will Google let me browse the web with "my own OS" without their proprietary services installed on it? (see 1)
Having control of something isn't the same as third party services granting you access. Many online games only supports windows with secureboot and TPM enabled, but that would be a silly excuse to say that you don't really "own" your PC.
It depends on a remote endpoint that can go down at any point, and depends on the company's policies present and future. It is functionally asking for permission to another party to unlock it, and that would not fall under the umbrella of ownership through being able to install "my own OS" on it, at least for me. And a simple OTA update is all it takes to add multiple verification steps to it, such as providing your ID/using your verified Google account, or just take it out.
2. There's no real disadvantage to leaving your bootloader in "locked (unlockable)"[1] state, because you can continue using stock rom and avb is enforced, but you can unlock it at any point using fastboot.
3. The Bandcamp analogy still applies because it offers streaming too (ie. web player), which means you could be happily streaming (ie. not downloading) and then one day they shut down, denying you access to all your music.
Your example is about one developer's decision, which is not really what we're talking about. The damage goes way up when you start talking about an arbitrary number of applications. A more apt analogy is, what if you couldn't install any applications except through the Windows Store? We're talking about restrictions laid down by the OS developer and for iding all applications outside of their crappy walled garden, which is very different. Also, you don't actually think Google is going to stop there do you? They will certainly turn it off one day of they think they can get away with it, because it is in their financial self-interests to do so.
Is it? Many games outsource their anticheat to a third party developer, similar to how many apps outsource their app security to play integrity.
>The damage goes way up when you start talking about an arbitrary number of applications. A more apt analogy is, what if you couldn't install any applications except through the Windows Store?
What about (nearly) all the games that only support windows, and worse yet, are exclusives on one distribution platform? Yes, there's wine/proton and cracks, but that's a "solution" in the same way that using a modded apk to get past the play integrity requirements is a "solution".
So nothing would change (they can also lock away your "valuable community feedback" because what bothers them is the criticism itself), thus feel free to express your approval
I think there's a difference between criticism of a policy and being brigaded by a reddit mob.
Apple has had this feature for three years on iOS. What else should they have done?
Use an AOSP fork like grapheneos or lineageos. Barring that, voting with their wallets and buying a HarmonyOS phone. If for whatever reason they're doing that too, there's probably more powerful forces behind this change (eg. government mandates) that won't be helped by spamming an issue tracker.
Sure, there are differences in types criticisms, but then try to actually articulate those and address whatever you think the issues with those are
Google does take feedback from app developers every now and then, but obviously their own teams' feelings on the subject are more important to them than some open source developers relying on a hack like in this article.
I think it should be quite obvious that the ADB daemon wasn't designed to enable call recording from an app initiating an adb session over a loopback address. https://xkcd.com/1172/ strikes again.
That doesn't mean the developer who wrote this is wrong to dislike the change: Google themselves have added call recording to their dialer a while ago so it's clearly a feature they stand behind. That doesn't mean the adb team shouldn't do a little security hardening, though.
That use-case was never designed for when the sensor was added, and is every bit as hacky and fun as adding call recording with a loopbakc address
And that's the first problem: Android is no longer fun, and it's no longer for trying this hilariously stupid hacky method of doing what we, the users, want.
The second problem is an attitude of "Google's dialer has it built-in, why would one want a third-party dialer instead of Google's?"
Because we fucking can - or could, at least. The OS was designed to be as modular as possible, to the point where, while iOS still can't change their launcher, Android has had that option since day one. Setting aside Google casting themselves as the (not so) benevolent dictator of "Just use our apps exclusively. Life will be easier that way", closing off the modularity is antithecal to the Android experience that so many geeks fell in love with, and arguably made the platform what it is
Most of the users who saw the post on reddit didn't even open the blog post anyways, according to analytics.
Now, I’m waiting for a workaround to enable ADB, so sideloading can be handled now, too.
Android is not more open that iOS for a very long time now. The trend will continue.
Again, this is not a technical problem (the mindset of Google), so technological solutions won’t help.
This is not even Google's mindset, the control strings of this mindset stretch far beyond its management and board of directors.
That's the OBEY from the timeless Carpenter's classic.
"Intended use" (as understood by Google) for my smartphone is apparently providing them with data, consuming their advertisements and overpaying for apps that display ads and where you need in-app purchases to unlock basic functionality.
> not as a hack for escalating privileges
Hack for "escalating privileges" on my own device so I can do nefarious actions like uninstalling bloatware, denying apps internet access, recording calls (legally).. how could that be?
All of these can be done with a computer.
>recording calls (legally)..
A second phone does the same thing.
>Hack for "escalating privileges" on my own device so I can do nefarious actions
Whether it's a "hack" is orthogonal to whether you control the device or not. I don't think anyone disputes that you "own" your linux PC, but using the well known `docker run --privileged ...`[1] method to get root on your machine is still a hack.
[1] random result: https://github.com/Volodishlav/Docker-Privilege-Escalation
Can you permanently apply chain3 (FIREWALL_CHAIN_OEM_DENY_3) firewall rules, so that when the device reboots these are still applied? I see no persistence. And if I'm forced to install some crappy app on-the-go, the solution you propose is to always carry a computer with me, right?
> A second phone does the same thing.
So does a Phonograph from 1877, right?
> Whether it's a "hack" is orthogonal to whether you control the device or not.
I didn't object to it being called a hack, I just pointed out how evil and malicious that privilege escalation on my own device is. Google must block it immediately, it endangers the mankind.
Just use firewall VPN apps + VPN lockdown mode (ie. "block connections without VPN").
>So does a Phonograph from 1877, right?
I think it's fair to factor in what feature was lost because wireless-adb-on-localhost was removed. If some critical accessibility feature was lost, that would be far more important than something that's merely a mild annoyance, like needing a second device to run `adb install`.
>I just pointed out how evil and malicious that privilege escalation on my own device is. Google must block it immediately, it endangers the mankind.
Right, but going back to the docker root analogy, would you think it's unreasonable if people threw a hissy fit of linux kernel/docker developers added some security feature that blocked it?
We don't need anything to completely capture the market, it has to be just enough to make Google hesitate or make it hard for Google to do it for legal reasons. Like how Firefox is ideally supposed to be for Chrome.
To be honest, it is quite scary that Google is able to remotely roll out an app like that to all GMS Android phones. Of course, we all knew that, but it highlights again that Google can remotely take away functionality that you had before, brick your phone, etc.
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
Are any commercial mobile phone vendors not able to do such a thing? Do remember that this giant kerfuffle is all over the seeming preparation for the apparent removal of a developer feature that iPhones have never had at all.
Apple can do the same for iPhones. In terms of dark shit they can do there's no difference anymore.
If vendors use updates to restrict functionality that the user had before, puts existing features behind paywalls, etc. people are rightfully outraged, because it breaks the social contract.
It's just that the repeated offenses have made us insensitive. Imagine Debian rolling out some mechanism that only allows you to install software outside their repos with a 24 hour delay. It would destroy Debian.
Yes, that is what I meant. They should be hesitant to lockdown completely and (grudgingly even) allow alternative options and/or workarounds due to legal concerns like anti-trust.
Firefox was existing before Chrome, but in this case we either need a different OS or need an android based option like Graphene/3rd party stores gain enough marketshare to trigger anti-competitive laws.
Here is a better question:
"Is the EU going to stop this?"
GNU/Linux phones already exist. Sent from my Librem 5.
If you want your website to be openable on Apple devices, you would have to pay Apple a fee each month. If you want your website to be openable on Android devices, you would have to pay Google a fee ecah month, etc.
You mean the new recaptcha that requires remote attestation?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/07/googles-new-remote-att...
Obviously, it doesn't have the fee part. But Google can decide soon for a substantial number of websites which devices can visit them and which not.
You would have the "new web" consisting of the top n major websites paying this fee.
And then you would have the "old web", accessible only to people still owning their own PCs with unrestricted browsers. And probably heavily scrapped by AI companies to reguritate to the masses through the new web.
You don't have to pay a fee directly, but you can't use open source web browsers.
edit: I not realizing that I been replying to wrong comment
So you won't be able to use your banking apps, your local transport app, public services apps, health services apps, etc.
But sure, you can do SMS (no RCS though), use the device calculator, and maybe browse the Web… until websites kick you out because your non Chrome/Safari browser isn't supported anymore. Even Signal won't work well due to the lack of FCM.
And I'm a GrapheneOS user happy with Obtainium and without Play Services installed in main user space.
Not that I trust a device running Android enough to do banking, mind you.
I'd love to see legislation that mandated a functioning web experience for critical services like this (banking, utilities, etc) - otherwise it will continue to further entrench the current duopoly.
(I suppose this is also an instance where I should do a better job of voting with my feet and supporting services that do offer this)
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/fr/qanda_...
Require payment services providers to ensure that all users can benefit from methods to perform SCA which are adapted to their needs and situations and, in particular, that those methods do not depend on one single technology, device or mechanism, for instance on the possession of a smartphone.
Our company also uses Revolut business, but that requires a phone app to verify online payments with cards. And Revolut recently changed the app so it now requires Google Play Integrity so it doesn't work with LineageOS anymore. So I'm looking to move all new things away from Revolut. I have little patience with companies that want to unbank my company, and decide what hardware or software we use.
I bank with HSBC in the UK and there's still branches (worldwide) and banking via web.
I assume you mean things like Starling and Monzo in this case? Banking with them is simply dangerous.
Same in Norway.
I've been getting by with a bankid codebrick and web browser access (although Nordea and DNB apps work fine on GrapheneOS).
And both are banks I'd never want to associate with. I would have used Sbanken before the DNB buyout (and I even did for a bit!), but now that's of the table too.
There are a few more options, but many are just worse if you look at their fees and interest rates.
I've been very happy with Bulder. The only thing they're missing is a web portal. The fact that they're missing that annoys me greatly, but they've been good to me in every single other aspect, so it's hard to be dissatisfied (especially compared to the other banks where I and others have been burned). Their app works fine on de-Googled Android, and so long as that's true, I can live with my choices.
I'm an immigrant and most banks refused to give me an account when I moved here. Or ghosted me during the months long process. These are the banks that let me live here, and actually gave me an account and bank id. It's the only real choice I have until I get citizenship.
There's no reason the banks should be dicks about it, but they often are in cases like yours. All the accounts I've opened in recent times have just been a matter of logging in with BankID and going through the form and selecting 'no' 10 times. Once you've got BankID and can go through the automated flow, there shouldn't really ever be any issues.
This is why it bothers me greatly that BankID is still controlled by the banks, since they can just decide that someone like you shouldn't get it. It should be government issued and issued to everyone, on the same level as an ID card or a passport.
What’s worrying is that noone protests about it
It doesn’t suprise me that corporations and governments want the laziest, most „protective” laws passed that extend their power. But why noone, absolutely noone puts some kind of resistance to it?
Government and citizens are at eternal conflict of interests. It has been this way and it will be this way forever.
Your job as a citizen is to make sure you have greatest amount of liberties
Noone will do it for you.
The only other alternative available is SMS but that is being phased out (rightly so) for being insecure.
I'm not quite sure why they don't support something like a yubikey with FIDO, but maybe there's a good reason.
So, they don't want me to even have that one reason to keep choosing Android, I guess.
Google is really stretching their goodwill with this one. The ability to sideload and debug my phone is the only marginal benefit to these janky Java relics. If that's gone, no reason not to switch to a wholely better platform.
I've been seeing this specifically with ID / business verification requirements where they just have some innocent (or sometimes complicit) third party grant them access to verasign 'verified' trust signing keys which actually makes them way more trusted than they were ever before often making anti-malware applications way less strict about blocking it which in turn buys them just enough time to compromise the system and disable said anti-malware applications. The problem here is that anti-malware applications try to be seemless and are effectively in a giant race condition to terminate the application, more recently microsoft anti malware service will now block program execution until it validates that it is safe. Although it is not something other companies do as making the device feel sluggish is something they avoid at all costs (looking at you bitdefender).
https://github.com/thedjchi/Shizuku/wiki/setup
So it requires
* Enable Developer Options if not already enabled (Generally, this is done by going to Settings > About device and tapping Build number 7 times).
* Enable both USB debugging and Wireless debugging. Tap "Allow" if prompted to allow wireless debugging on the current network.
* Tap Pair device with pairing code.
* Downloadd other apps like ShizuCallRecorder
Or seems to be exactly what this user described.
https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=49046291&goto=item%3Fi...
I Don't know what else I can do though, next up is switching to grapheneOS but I'm a ways off from that for now.
I assume Sailfish and Ubuntu Touch are completely unimpacted?
I feel like an iPhone will be next. Good Android phones are already pricey
All sorts of goverment agencies, airport security, even teachers now have access. And such attacks can be trivially automated, so even low paid worker can do it.
Arguably it would be highly preferable compared to the option of not being able to use them at all.
- some people want A, or A might even be already in use
- A is problematic for $MODERATE_OR_MILD_REASON
- B is introduced and made default
- a config switch between A and B is never considered
So, so tiring. If I want to bind ADB to localhost, _let me_. It's my device and my problem, ffs.
Not everyone has the same threat model as you, $BIGTECHCORP.
Like, if security was a concern we would have simpler systems and still use 2fa devices for banks etc.
Like iPhone idle auto-reboot every 3 days. After a while they added "Allow Idle Reboot" flag but it only accessible via MDM and require device wipe and for switching it to be a managed device.
It puts iPhone in cold boot state if for instance police or any agency confiscate it from you. Better tamper proofing.
--
[0] - Which I find deeply ironic, in that merely a decade ago, people would laugh at Windows with its "reboot after installs, reboot in case of problems" approach, and now frequent reboots are seen as Standard Security and Stability Practice on *nix systems, both mobile and server-bound...
It’s not like that anymore in my experience at least but the stigma stuck.
There are hundreds of millions of outdated Android devices that all Google attestation systems consider secure even though they all running Linux kernel that was never ever updated and can be rooted by anything.
Now try to install your own firmware on them without said outdated kernel... How dare you.
Only things attestation do is security theater and messing up people ability to use software of their choosing.
You are free to install a custom OS which provides you the security model you desire. You have choices.
"Changing between A and B requires a device reset."
Most people are going to flat out refuse to wipe their device for a phisher, especially since it'll log them out of everything and trigger all sorts of "new device on your account" warnings everywhere if it's done without their knowledge.
Sure, this is mildly annoying for the 1% that have good reason for A — but it's annoying once per device rather than losing A for good as is happening now. Sure, Google will deny service to A. They're doing that no matter what, either b/c they remove A or b/c they deny A, but this forces them to construct and defend a case for why users who went through the hassle of wiping their device to switch to A ought to be denied access to the app store, and that's a critically absent case in regulatory circles right now. (See also Graphene vs. the EU age check app.)
That's all it would take to protect B from A, but no one asks for it, and no one presses Google publicly for it, and so of course Google isn't doing it. No megacorp will help you walk off the Golden Path without some sort of extrinsic pressure. I see a great deal of clamor around wanting A, but absolutely none of the 'here's a mild annoyance that we came up with as a valid and safe compromise' clamor that would make them look incompetent in the public eye, provide further leverage for EU antitrust steps regarding Android itself, and give them a way to continue to protect users who need B for safety, while allowing those of us who want A to pursue it.
Perhaps other styles of compromise exist, too? As far as I can determine, no one else is thinking about this in terms of "what compromises will developers offer that continue to protect non-developers?", and so I have no other examples to offer. I'd sure love to see more ideas, more effort invested into offering serious and real compromises rather than inflexible resistance of every real safety improvement.
And why should modern corpo maintain additional complexity to pander to 1% of privacy-aware tech-savvy users?
Now, the tradeoff is - less vertical integration, double the integration layer trash (Google & OEM) and a much more locked down experience. But the quality of it hasn't improved, it just got worse.
Doesn't make sense anymore. They can now do 99% of the same things, but iOS has a better quality OS, better apps and better vertical integration.
Not even vertical integration, actually just any kind. FFS it's 2026 and the recommended android way to send a photo to your mac/PC is "upload to google photos and hope it decides to sync".
and conveniently, google now has access to your photo, the meta data, and potentially able to scan it for advertising purposes.
Android is turning into the iOS/OSX/Win11 model. It’s not your device, you’re just renting it.
You need permission to install applications, or do anything else outside of consuming subscription services.
Where are the Linux phones ?
I personally don't have a problem with a mediocre-performance phone but it should not be expensive. Not to mention app ecosystems - there aren't a lot of Linux apps for Linux phones.
Where Android/iPhone users have "apps", I mostly end up writing small shell scripts around existing linux tools. My alarm clock "app" is realized via cron jobs; my TOTP "app" is a one-liner around `oathtool`.
Messenger apps are a bit tricky; I'll probably end up hosting my own matrix homeserver and then have bridges running for Signal and the likes.
Do these people even know tech illiterate people? They couldn't enable ADB even with instructions.
However, I'm pretty sure these entities will already have negotiated exemptions from the restrictions so in that sense they don't add much security.
Either way the writing is on the wall, and has been for a while.
It's just that few people bother using it. But that number might increase if Android continues it's war against its users.
Sidenote: The poster in that article is insane to me. Imagine advertising yourself as the only alternative. I'd rather vote for an empty seat than for someone who's that arrogant! Then again, I don't really have to imagine it, since there have been quite a few politicians within the last 10 years who have functionally done that same, just without actually saying those words out loud.
Not a rhetorical tinfoil question: Does anyone still believe there's some hope for personal freedoms?
as long as such personal freedoms gives users the ability to skirt the profit motives of companies making these devices, there will always be a force to try restrict it.
The internet, as it has been, is quite an anomaly, but inevitably, power that the people have gets usurped one way or another. It's just a matter of time.
It's not an anomaly, it was the data grabbing infrastructure, and now that enough data is vacuumed in from it to train AI, it is now time to turn this dangerously conductive communication network into a control-only one, by all logic of the process and those who funded it all the way.
I mean it's OK for the crowd here, because amongst us are people who created the technical backends to let these rackets going.
They started with "we love open" and when became virtual monopoly they extort the position :/
Or maybe Google is genuinely about thinking this in good faith. I can't see how, though.
- You install a malicious application.
- You enable USB debugging, starting ADBD.
- You connect via USB ADB to enable TCP/IP, then disconnect the USB cable.
- ADBD continues running and listens on all network interfaces.
- The application initiates a connection, causing an authorization prompt to appear on the screen. If the user selects No, the connection is rejected. No silent exploitation attempts are possible.
I understand the author's rationale and think the reasons why that whole ecosystem is accessing ADB are legitimate - but I have some questions here.
The above flow is basically what apps that use Shizuku have to do as well, right? Only that in that case, the user would deliberately install the app and have the knowledge it uses ADB features and therefore would also confirm the permission prompt.
However, ADBD in this situation only sees a connection attempt, not which app made the attempt, right?
So it also cannot remember that a particular app was already authorized by the user and has to display the prompt again on each connection attempt?
Does that mean that a Shizuku-enabled app would prompt the user again for ADB access any time it's started?
This seems honestly like Shizuku itself would increase the risk of a user granting ADB access to a bad actor (i.e. a second app or external connection that is different from the app the user wanted to authorize).
Thinking of "scenario 3" if a Shizuku-enabled app is already running on the device and something else wants to connect to ADB:
- I'm assuming a malicious app was already installed (without privileges) or something tries to connect to port 5555 from outside or via proxyware.
- ADBD is already running and listening for TCP to serve the Shizuku app, so those steps can be taken for granted.
- The malicious app or connection triggers a permission prompt from ADBD. However, by that time, the user has grown used to those prompts, because the Shizuku triggers them frequently, so they are more likely to select "yes".
If ADBD has no information about who is connecting, it also can't show any meaningful information in the prompt. So it cannot really help the user distinguish prompts from the legitimate Shizuku app from malicious prompts. A user still has the timing and context to distinguish prompts, i.e. prompts that appear out of the blue when they aren't using the app are suspicious.
Every ADB connection has some kind of certificate / key that is saved locally. This means that a new application would have a different certificate. That certificate is shown in the yes/no prompt.
> Does that mean that a Shizuku-enabled app would prompt the user again for ADB access any time it's started?
You can tell android to remember that certificate and allow the connection next time. There is a bug that make it not work on certains specific version of Android 12 I think, but outside of that, it always works.
Perhaps they should be subjected to the full force of the First Amendment.
"You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it".
It has become truer every year that has passed since then.
The 2026 version : "If you believe you will be allowed to keep any kind of control over the devices you "own", you are deluding yourself".
Shizuku uses Binder AFAICS[^1]. Looking deeper it seems that Shizuku does not connect to the device itself per se, but rather it has a privileged server launched manually through adb. Never used Shizuku, so can't say for sure.
[1]: https://github.com/rikkaapps/shizuku#how-does-shizuku-work
Louis Rossman will have a field day with Google here. I think it is time to end Evil - that is, to end Google. This company serves no more useful purpose on this planet anymore.
Per FTC, a stalkerware will: geo locate, read call list & record calls, read notifications, texts, & possibly emails, access gallery, camera, & files, and monitor network activity. [1]
You could do all of those with "on-device adb" (in some cases, with just the appropriate permissions), without root access. Stalkerware & financial fraud enabled merely due to the scale & reach of Android (half of humanity uses it!) and lack of basic security literacy warrants such protective measures, as (Thaler & Sunstein would like to remind us) defaults matter.
With conspiracies abound, we must not lose sight of tech safety and related issues, which almost exclusively affect the most vulnerable & the most disadvantaged.
[0] https://www.techsafety.org/spyware-and-stalkerware-phone-sur...
It is much easier for spyware to be installed as a device administrator, granted accessibility privileges, and then given every possible Android permission via AppOps as a one-time setup.
At that point, ADB no longer matters. The spyware is already configured and ready to run. Even if on-device ADB were patched, anyone with physical access to the phone would still be able to install and configure their spyware via a USB cable.
As for attacks without physical access, as explained in the article with the 3 scenario, this is neither practical nor realistic. It only affects a very small subset of users (primarily Android developers) under very specific circumstances and during limited time windows.
Correct, and apps using these setups (even for genuine reasons) have been under the cosh.
> At that point, ADB no longer matters.
"on-device adb" wasn't meant for scenarios it is being used for (via Shizuku, for example). It is a pointless attack surface.
> anyone with physical access to the phone would still be able to install and configure their spyware via a USB cable.
This same case can be made in support of removing on-device adb. Anyone with physical access can install & configure for their use cases. If you claim that's more hassle than worth, then you have your answer (that is, added hassle for stalkerware sellers, too).
Disallowing on-device adb is restrictive (I co-develop a security app that can absolutely make more from elevated permissions, via Shizuku or Device Admin; let alone root), but I don't think Google will do so because they want to close Android (the platform) more than they need to. To me, given the very human costs of stalkerware & financial fraud, it is an understandable, even if disappointing, security decision. Otoh, I do get that the road to hell is paved with good intentions...
Like Google Mobile Services on stock Android?
Anyone up for the challenge? Or a better solution.
Fuck this bullshit. It's only going to get worse.
