[ruszki]

How large is this preinfected phones problem? Is it large enough to sacrifice freedom?

[Avamander]

We have had a large discovery of pre-installed malware every year for the past decade so far. Seems like a fairly big problem.

[seba_dos1]

And how exactly did attestation help there?

Securing apps from the user does not secure the user from malware.

[Avamander]

Now you can't bundle malware deep within the system "ROM" unless you want to break SafetyNet's attestation. It's a big change in that aspect.

[ruszki]

Custom ROMs tell you that this is not true at all.

[Avamander]

Custom ROMs no longer pass SafetyNet attestation, which apps such as banking ones (or streaming service ones) check.

[ruszki]

I hope you mean Play Integrity, since there is no SafetyNet attestation anymore. And for that: https://github.com/osm0sis/PlayIntegrityFork

But there were similar things for SafetyNet attestation until it existed.