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by strcat 103 days ago
Persistent app-accessible root greatly regresses OS security and breaks the verified boot security model. We're definitely not going to increase the number of build variants from 40 to 80 in order to provide an insecure option which would take away from efforts to properly implement features instead of doing it via hacks using apps running commands as root. If you want it you can make your own builds with it instead of us doubling the number of builds and deltas we need to make. Most of the people doing it are modifying the official builds and resigning them. Anyone who can understand the consequences of app-accessible root is capable of doing that.
2 comments
allreduce 103 days ago
Are there more security disadvantages besides the obvious when giving one app like Termux root access? The obvious being that you trust Termux and all binaries running in it with total access to your system.

I am mainly looking to access my filesystem. Currently a lot of things I want to do (backing up app data, scripting, mounting network drives) are hobbled by the bad wrappers around the same.

I know this might be out of scope, but is there any plan to re-enable direct filesystem access in a more secure way? Even via ADB it would be useful. It just seems like madness to me that a lot of basics tasks are impossible or incredibly convoluted, because everything has to go through weird wrapper interfaces and Java/Kotlin code someone has to write (instead of just using the filesystem and OS which is right there).

Thanks for the great work by the way.

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flawn 103 days ago
I get that but the core issue is not inconvenience but the fact that also doing that still locks you out of applications that many people call essential (tap2pay, banking, streaming, other various apps relying on Play Integrity).

Google is actively locking down the ecosystem in that regard and it would be amazing having a company that caters to people that are savvy AND would like to still be attested for integrity tests (assuming Google would be OK with that, but as mentioned in another comment unlikely)

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