I was thinking about the time Louis Rossman (who used to advocate for using Graphene OS) said he stopped using GrapheneOS because he didn’t trust the former lead dev.
He lied about stopping use of GrapheneOS. He can be seen in videos long after still using GrapheneOS on his Pixel. Also, the reasons he stated for not using/trusting it were nonsense. There was not, and is not, a technical way to target a user with malicious OTA updates.
You understand that in those chats, Micay had been the victim of ongoing harassment, perpetuated by Rossman and Calyx leadership, which culminated in doxxing and then a SWAT attack which is a threat on their life.
They didn’t lie about stepping down. They took a back seat to development work and the public eye because of these experiences. It was an enormous toll on their mental and physical health.
Now does that excuse Rossman for mislabeling na individual with mental diagnoses? Does that excuse them and other people for dismissing what they say based on these false labels?
Ok first of all: GrapheneOS is great, probably the best alternative Android OS, but their PR skills are rock bottom. Still, many ignore that due to how good it is.
With that said, I don’t believe their claim that it’s impossible for them to target a user with a malicious OTA: their reason is basically that the update server never even knows who is downloading, and so it can’t send a different file to just one user. That’s true, but thet could, in theory, make a single OTA that everybody gets, but checks for a specific IMEI or other device ID and only there enables some malicious payload.
I trust them not to do it, for many reasons, but technically they could. I also don’t think they’d do it to Louis, despite the beef they have with him.
Well, the fact is it is impossible to target someone with a modified update. The update client sends no IDs to the server, it just fetches static files and determines whether it needs to update or not. The server only has static files.
thet could, in theory, make a single OTA that everybody gets, but checks for a specific IMEI or other device ID and only there enables some malicious payload.
That would be very obvious in the code. And how would devices be targeted if GrapheneOS project members don’t know the unique IDs because they’re not sent in the first place? There are also community members who build GrapheneOS on their own and check if the builds match because GrapheneOS builds are reproducible. It just isn’t possible. But even if people don’t believe all of that, they can still disable the updater app and sideload updates manually. Instructions are on the website.
Not really directed at Lemmy.
I was thinking about the time Louis Rossman (who used to advocate for using Graphene OS) said he stopped using GrapheneOS because he didn’t trust the former lead dev.
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor comes to mind.
In this situation, any closed source developer/project manager would never disclose such issues, if they caught them at all.
I trust open source code a hell of a lot more then close sourced stuff because anyone can look at it/test it and see if somethings fucky.
The whole entire point of free software is trustlessness.
You always have to trust others. If a key person can not be trusted anymore, the option to constantly check the code is not really an option.
Ref. the famous Ken Thompson hack. At some point you’re forced to trust someone.
At this point GrapheneOS is big enough that there are people who do pay attention to changes and forks that would notice as well.
He lied about stopping use of GrapheneOS. He can be seen in videos long after still using GrapheneOS on his Pixel. Also, the reasons he stated for not using/trusting it were nonsense. There was not, and is not, a technical way to target a user with malicious OTA updates.
He was also one of 3 owners of a for-profit telecom that included Nick Merrill (Founder of Calyx). https://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2009536/000200953624000001/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml is the SEC filing for shares issued in February 2024 .
I don’t see how any of this is an excuse to what has been said in the chats. Micay also lied about stepping down from GOS.
You understand that in those chats, Micay had been the victim of ongoing harassment, perpetuated by Rossman and Calyx leadership, which culminated in doxxing and then a SWAT attack which is a threat on their life.
They didn’t lie about stepping down. They took a back seat to development work and the public eye because of these experiences. It was an enormous toll on their mental and physical health.
Now does that excuse Rossman for mislabeling na individual with mental diagnoses? Does that excuse them and other people for dismissing what they say based on these false labels?
Ok first of all: GrapheneOS is great, probably the best alternative Android OS, but their PR skills are rock bottom. Still, many ignore that due to how good it is.
With that said, I don’t believe their claim that it’s impossible for them to target a user with a malicious OTA: their reason is basically that the update server never even knows who is downloading, and so it can’t send a different file to just one user. That’s true, but thet could, in theory, make a single OTA that everybody gets, but checks for a specific IMEI or other device ID and only there enables some malicious payload.
I trust them not to do it, for many reasons, but technically they could. I also don’t think they’d do it to Louis, despite the beef they have with him.
Well, the fact is it is impossible to target someone with a modified update. The update client sends no IDs to the server, it just fetches static files and determines whether it needs to update or not. The server only has static files.
That would be very obvious in the code. And how would devices be targeted if GrapheneOS project members don’t know the unique IDs because they’re not sent in the first place? There are also community members who build GrapheneOS on their own and check if the builds match because GrapheneOS builds are reproducible. It just isn’t possible. But even if people don’t believe all of that, they can still disable the updater app and sideload updates manually. Instructions are on the website.