[charcircuit]

You don't have to be a billion dollar corporation to become Play Protect certified.

Being able to trust the security of a client can protect against many attacks and it is up to web sites to evaluate what to do with into information that a client is proven to be secure.

[nine_k]

Fair. Two questions:

- What is the least expensive device that can be certified like that? The least expensive process?

- What is the highest level of openness such a device can offer to the user, and why?

To my mind, it would be best to have an option of a completely locked down and certified hardware token, a device like a Yubikey, that could talk to my laptop, desktop, phone, or any other computing device using a standard protocol. As long as it's unforgeable, the rest of the system can be much. much less secure, without compromising the overall security.

[charcircuit]

>What is the least expensive device that can be certified like that?

I don't know. I haven't personally gone through the process.

>What is the highest level of openness such a device can offer to the user, and why?

You have to follow the CDD. https://source.android.com/docs/compatibility/13/android-13-...

and you of course must pass the compatibility tests. So it can be as open as you would like as long as you do not break the android security model.

>it would be best to have an option of a completely locked down and certified hardware token, a device like a Yubikey

That approach is limiting since secrets can't be passed to the host operating system and compute with secrets have to happen on the secure device.

[kevincox]

> as long as you do not break the android security model.

AKA as long as you don't give control to the user.

[charcircuit]

>AKA as long as you don't give control to the user.

A system being secure doesn't mean that the user doesn't have control. The operating system should allow the user to control it, but only in a secure way that doesn't compromise the rest of the security of the system. The Windows way of having an administrator account or Linux of having a root account given to the user has been proven over time to be worse for security. Windows has been trying to roll back this mistake, but most Linux distributions don't do anything because they don't care that much about security compared to an operating system like Android.

[kevincox]

Sure, in theory it doesn't but in practice it does.

I wanted to extract some data files from an app I was using and Google's Android told me that I was not allowed to do that. That was the apps data not my data.

It doesn't really matter root/fine grained permissions. The fact is that on stock Pixel phones the user can't access whatever data they want. So in practice they don't have control.

[charcircuit]

That same ability makes it possible for 2FA apps to exist since the secrets can't be copied, turning the factor into something you know instead of something you have. Additionally just because someone is using a device that doesn't mean that the current user is the owner of the device.

[bitwize]

Play Protect is different from SafetyNet.

SafetyNet means the app checks to make sure you're not rooted or running a custom ROM because those are considered a security risk. If you are not running a locked-down OEM ROM, you can't run many apps including banking apps.

Microsoft's Pluton on-CPU attestation technology means this is coming to PCs.

[charcircuit]

I am talking about "Play Protect certification." SafetyNet is deprectaed and has been replaced with the Play Integrity API.

>means the app checks to make sure you're not rooted or running a custom ROM

The purpose is to be able to tell if the user is running a version of the app is from the play store or to be able to tell if the device's integrity isn't compromised meaning that it can not rely on the security guarantees the OS provides. Banking apps are not against people using custom ROMs. They just want to ensure they are running on a secure operating system.

[Dylan16807]

I care about the real effect more than the (main) purpose.

And that effect is against custom ROMs and other kinds of user control.

[nine_k]

Having a dedicated, locked-down device to access banks or other high-stakes services could be a good, if more expensive, solution.

Keep it powered down when not needed for extra security.

Idealy, it could be smaller than a smartphone, and use smartphone's or laptop's hardware for UI and networking.

[kevincox]

It could be good if it was my choice. But I actually want to be able to access my bank from my computer running open source software where I can modify configuration and apply patches.

I don't want to have to agree to Microsoft or Apple's ToS so that I can access my bank.

I do not look forward to trying to find a bank that doesn't require this of me because all of the major banks have jumped on board.

[charcircuit]

>It could be good if it was my choice.

Usually banks don't let you disable antifraud protections. They prefer to make their business and the banking system more secure by reducing the rate of fraud. Fraud is expensive for them to deal with so it doesn't really make financial sense to let customers say that they are okay with having more fraud happen using their account.

[Dylan16807]

You can always surveil more. Banks should not have the option to decrease privacy over and over for tiny little impacts on fraud.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> Being able to trust the security of a client can protect against many attacks

So the server is wildly insecure and wants to make it my problem.

[charcircuit]

>So the server is wildly insecure and wants to make it my problem.

Take for example a simple spam bot. The bot authenticates and then starts sending spam to people. Detecting spam and spammers server side is an imperfect art. It is a constant game of doing things to reduce the rate of spam. It can help a lot if you can ensure that only your client is able to work with your service. This means that attackers can't just write some python script and deploy it somewhere. They have to actually be running your app and actually liking the content in the app. This increases the costs for attackers and reduces the amount of spam.

Both client and server security is important.