GrapheneOSApple and Google are gradually expanding their use of hardware-based attestation. They're convincing a growing number of services to adopt it. Google's Play Integrity API and Apple's App Attest API are very similar. Apple brought it to the web via Privacy Pass, which Google intends on doing too.
Google's Play Integrity API requires hardware attestation for the strong integrity level and is gradually phasing in requiring it for the more commonly used device integrity level. Apple already has it as a requirement. Over the long term, this will increasingly lock out hardware and OS competition.
The purpose of these systems is disallowing people from using hardware and software not approved by Apple or Google. This is wrongly presented as being a security feature. Banks and government services are the main ones adopting it but Apple and Google are encouraging every service to use it.
Apple's Privacy Pass brought hardware attestation to the web to help with passing captchas on their own hardware. Many people saw that as harmless since few sites would be willing to lock out non-Apple-hardware users. Apple and Google are both likely to bring broader hardware attestation to the web.
Google's reCAPTCHA is planning an approach where they use Privacy Pass on Apple hardware, their own approach on Google Mobile Services Android devices and a QR code scanning system to require an iOS or Google certified Android device for Windows and other systems:
Banking and government services increasingly require using a mobile app where they can use attestation to force using an Apple or Google approved device and OS. Apple's privacy pass, Google's 'cancelled' Web Environment Integrity and now reCAPTCHA Mobile Verification are bringing this to the web.
Current media coverage for reCAPTCHA Mobile Verification misunderstands it and the impact of it. They're bringing a hardware attestation requirement to Windows, desktop Linux, OpenBSD, etc. by requiring a QR scan from a certified smartphone to pass reCAPTCHA in some cases. They could expand it more.
Control over reCAPTCHA puts Google in a position where they can require having either iOS or a certified Android device to use an enormous amount of the web. Google defines certification requirements for Android which includes forcing bundling Google Chrome, etc. It's enormously anti-competitive.
Google's Play Integrity API bans using GrapheneOS despite it being far more secure than anything they permit. It also bans using any other alternative. This isn't somehow specific to an AOSP-based OS. You can't avoid this by using a mobile OS based on FreeBSD instead. You'll just be more locked out.
Google's Play Integrity API permits devices with no security patches for 10 years. The device integrity level can be bypassed via spoofing but they can detect it quite well and block it once it starts being done at scale. The strong integrity level requires leaked keys from TEEs/SEs to bypass it.
Play Integrity API is highly insecure and it isn't particularly hard to temporarily bypass it. There are frameworks for spoofing the software checks and leaked keys for bypassing hardware attestation can be purchased. However, bypasses are getting harder and are becoming increasingly short lived.
It doesn't provide a useful security feature, but it does lock out competition very well. Services requiring Apple App Attest or Google Play Integrity are primarily helping to lock in Apple and Google having a duopoly for mobile devices. Play Integrity is more relevant due to AOSP being open source.
Governments are increasingly mandating using Apple's App Attest and Google's Play Integrity for not only their own services but also commercial services. The EU is leading the charge of making these requirements for digital payments, ID, age verification, etc. Many EU government apps require them.
Instead of governments stopping Apple and Google from engaging in egregiously anti-competitive behavior, they're directly participating in locking out competition via their own services. Requiring people to have an Apple device or Google-certified Android device is anti-competition, not security.
d@nny disc@@GrapheneOS do not know almost anyone else who is making this exact point that "security" is a euphemism for "national security" and is actively opposed to privacy or auditability. certainly not user security. @dwaynemonroe has identified the extreme closeness of monopolistic and fascistic hierarchical unaccountable and potentially even illegal control
@GrapheneOS @dwaynemonroe pypi disabled pgp signing (certified donald stufft and william woodruff tag team production. woodruff whined about how he couldn't surveil some keypairs and claimed this made them "useless")
anyway if you want the cryptographic checkmark from pypi they need you to give microsoft or google a few minutes alone with your code before any user can see it. not "reproducible" but reprobuilds only bullies open source code not corps. would love the evangelism strike force to fight corporate DRM and not module signing in the kernel
it is very possible to reproducibly diff a build process with module signing, diffoscope just completely sucks
[yes i'm likely gonna fork it]
thanks for listening!
Nadia/Надя/नाडिया/娜迪亚/ نادية@hipsterelectron @GrapheneOS @dwaynemonroe The book to throw at people who can't grasp the significance is Edwin Black „IBM and the Holocaust” and for what the target will be in the USA, to which I'll hopefully never be repatriated, witness e.g. Marsha Blackburn declaring that the purpose of KOSA is to „eradicate the transgender.” I figured out that no one was going to deal with the issue in good faith and fled the country before the inauguration, and was already vindicated at the inauguration itself.
Eric LawtonAnd "national security" is in turn a euphemism for "rulers' security".