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baatliwala ,

Your bank most likely has an app on mobile. If you have Root and Xposed you can do crazy things to that app (and your phone). You don’t use an app on a PC, you use their website.

Blackmist ,

Yeah, but that’s on you.

It’s not like you can use a hacked app to give you free money, unless they’re doing something completely absurd like relying on client side security.

gamermanh ,
@gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

It’s not to stop you from abusing their systems but to stop scam victims from being screwed

One easy example is that you can get around the “no screenshots” lock many bank apps use with root, allowing you to potentially expose security vital information to people.

Should those of us who know what we’re doing be allowed? Maybe.

But it’s there to protect the old people who will run the .exe that’s designed to root their phone and then let them hand over data that would otherwise be locked down so that doesn’t happen just because someone called them and said they’re from the bank.

BradleyUffner ,

And how is that any different from being on a PC? You didn’t even have to be root to take a screenshot there.

lemmyvore ,

Most bank apps nowadays are just a webview wrapper over their web app. And they only have two reasons to maintain that app, to be able to make contactless payments with the phone, and to farm your contacts (supposedly for easier money transfers).

mariusafa ,

Not only rooted. If you have de-googled Android image like LineageOs, CalyxOs, iodé, etc… It also detects it as rooted, even if it’s not.

MonkderDritte ,

Probably a “safety net” thing, which depends on Play Services’ binary blobs (which is spyware btw) and empty promises from Google.

ICastFist ,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

bUt sEcuRiteeeEeeeEEE

smileyhead ,

Banks when you use browser 3 years of updates behind on Windows XP with multiple unpatched CPU vulnerabilities:

markstos ,

Old, insecure browsers are rejected too.

rollingflower ,

There is no banking app for authenticating transactions for desktops?

BreakDecks ,

Your browser?

davidgro , (edited )

Web browsers.

Edit: Nevermind, I don’t know what this even is.

Chewy7324 ,

At least in the EU web browsers don’t allow for authenticating transactions (beyond a limit of e.g. 30€). Either an additional authenticator app or a standalone card reader is mandatory.

Luckily my banking apps work flawlessly on GrapheneOS and even microG, likely because of they care about the bootloader being locked again.

davidgro ,

I guess I don’t know what you mean by “authenticating transactions”.

Chewy7324 ,

Online transactions require a second factor which displays the actual amount to be transferred. This works by either an app which receives the transaction data (recipient, how much) over the network, or a device which takes the bank card and is used to scan something similar to a qr code. The device then displays the transaction data.

This makes sure a fraudulent site can’t easily change the amount or the recipient of a transaction, even if they somehow made an identical website (or close enough).

For remote transactions (e.g. online payments), the security requirements go even further, requiring a dynamic link to the amount of the transaction and the account of the payee, to further protect the user by minimising the risks in case of mistakes or fraudulent attacks.

www.ecb.europa.eu/…/1803_revisedpsd.en.html

It’s not perfect, especially with people using a banking app and the second factor app on the same device for convenience sake.

davidgro ,

Interesting. If they do that in the US some day, I would absolutely much rather buy that device than unroot my phone.

rollingflower ,

Not for authentication. No idea if this is not a thing, but banks here in Germany all have their weird proprietary TOTP app that checks if your device is rooted or now even if it is a “Google certified OS”.

You can use some weird hardware device instead with the obvious drawbacks.

SmoothLiquidation ,

My favorite thing is when banks don’t allow passwords that have spaces in them or are more than 12 characters long.

Honestly there should be a standard of what security means, like how passwords are stored and how TOTP is implemented, and if a bank doesn’t implement it then THEY are responsible for any “identity theft” that happens on their site, not the users.

rollingflower ,

Looking at you, fucking Paypal.

Or yes, my bank wanting only numbers not even letters.

Literally the only passwords I dont have in Firefox.

MonkderDritte ,

all have their weird proprietary TOTP app

But don’t support standards like WebAuthn or even FIDO 2.

rollingflower ,

There is no banking app for authenticating transactions for desktops?

bruhduh ,
@bruhduh@lemmy.world avatar

“Magisk hide” doing fine for me tho

UnfortunateShort , (edited )

The reason is very simple: They rely on Google Safetynet (basically self-diagnosis). And that will immediately tell you off if it notices your device is rooted. And while you can have a lengthy discussion regarding whether this makes your phone less secure or not, this is another simple argument from Google’s POV: The device has obviously been tampered with, we don’t want to put any resources into covering this case. As far as we are concerned, you shouldn’t use our OS like this.

So basically laziness.

Chewy7324 , (edited )

The banking apps I’ve tried don’t require SafetyNet, instead they use Android AOSP’s basicIntegrity. The latter doesn’t require certification by Google, but also checks whether the device is rooted and the bootloader is locked.

This means custom ROM’s on most devices won’t pass basicIntegrity, as only Google Pixel, OnePlus and Fairphone allow for relocking the bootloader.

Max_P ,
@Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me avatar

OnePlus no longer supports that as of ColorOS OxygenOS 12 unfortunately.

Chewy7324 ,

That’s a bummer. Seems like Google Pixel and Fairphone are the only ones left. I don’t even know why manufacturers wouldn’t allow for relocking or even unlocking of their phones. I can’t imagine they make much money with user data and the phone is already paid for. Warranty claims shouldn’t be much of an issue either, as modifications can be easily detected and it’s likely not a relevant amount of people anyway.

Spiralvortexisalie ,

As I understand it, the stated purpose is to prevent supply chain attacks and ultimately possible damage to their brand. In practice many of these same vendors ship their own spyware and do not want it removed.

huginn ,

SafetyNet is dead.

They rely on Play Integrity API.

That covers:

App Binary signatures App source corroboration - Was it actually installed from the Play Store? Android device attestation - Is it a genuine device powered by Google Play Services Malware detection - Google Play Protect is enabled and has not seen known malware signatures.

They can choose to ignore any number of those but they do not. It’s part of their security reporting requirements to use attestation I expect.

Beyond that - a device that doesn’t meet Play Integrity is more likely to be a malicious actor than it is to be a tech enthusiast with a rooted phone: One of them is far more prevalent than the other in terms of device usage.

Android apps are trivial to reverse engineer, inject code into and generally manipulate. That lets apps like ReVanced work the way they do… but that also means that blue team developers have a lot more work to do to protect app code.

Source - Android App Developer, worked on apps with high level security audits (like banking apps).

rem26_art ,
@rem26_art@fedia.io avatar

Banks and Uma Musume. Uma Musume also gets mad if you don't pass Device Integrity

Crow ,

My bank doesn’t know for some reason. I don’t even pass (as femme but that’s not relevant) safetynet, but it doesn’t seem to care. Sadly can’t pay with my phone or watch tho

bruhduh ,
@bruhduh@lemmy.world avatar

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f1145e0a-6447-4d23-b2f2-5b950a4c9102.jpeg

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

Google and Apple have been very successful at convincing everyone, including banks, to see the idea of users having control over their own phone-like computers as dangerous.

ICastFist ,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

Next thing you know, banks will try to convince its clients that they really don’t need to access all their money.

gbzm ,

I actually heard something about that in class not long ago

The story is that Android’s security heavily relies on the compartmentalization of apps that lives in the android layer, over the Linux kernel. Apparently, that functionality works in part because only this layer can perform operations that require root access, no app or user can. So software that allows you to root your phone apparently breaks this requirement, and makes the whole OS insecure. He even heavily implied that one should never root their phone with ‘free’ software found on the internet because that was usually a front for some nefarious shit regarding your data.

I’m just parroting a half-understood and half-remebered speech from a security expert. His credentials were impressive but I have no ability to judge that critically, if anyone knows more about this feel free to correct me.

superfes ,

I wouldn’t even feel compelled to root my phones if Google would actually back up my phone instead of whatever 1/4 baked shit they’ve done thus far.

pete_the_cat ,

I’ve been using android since 2010, and it’s gotten significantly better over the years. There’s only a few things it doesn’t back up, like text messages and app data, most of which you don’t need.

superfes ,

Mine backs up my text messages, but I would prefer to backup my app data, authenticators, wallpaper, themes, games, etc., not every app is a shitty front-end to a website.

Urist ,
@Urist@lemmy.ml avatar

It is not Android that is backing up most things though, it is mostly done by Google Services. That means that your data is effectively vendor locked-in if you want to use Android as an actual open source project. Google gutting the AOSP to this extent should be illegal (maybe even is, but might is right).

johannesvanderwhales ,

Isn’t saying that allowing apps to have root lets them access anything just describing what root is? A rooted phone doesn’t have to give superuser access to every app.

EinfachUnersetzlich ,

No, but it can.

cybersandwich ,

I think he was trying to say apps get access to “root features” through an abstraction layer/API calls that is controlled.

They don’t/wouldn’t have carte blanche root access to the underlying system. It’s kinda like a docker container or VM or flatpaks/snap packages on Linux. They are sandboxed from everything else and have to be given explicit premission to do certain things(anything that would need root privileges/hardware access).

dan ,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

A rooted phone doesn’t have to give superuser access to every app.

Sure, but apps that run as superuser can access anything, including the data and memory for banking apps. A big part of Android’s security model is that each app runs as a different user and can’t touch data that’s exclusively owned by another user.

johannesvanderwhales ,

It just means you need to trust apps that you give root access to, or only give elevated privileges during the very specific times when apps need them. Root isn’t something people who don’t know what they’re doing should be messing around with, I guess. But I’d think a lot of people who root their phone know and accept the risks.

dan ,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

People like you or I may know what we’re doing with a rooted device, but I think the issue for the banks is that they can’t guarantee that someone with a rooted phone knows what they’re doing or isn’t using a malicious app, so they have to be cautious and block all rooted phones.

An app that requires root may look like a normal app but it could be a trojan that modifies banking apps in the background (eg patches them on disk or in RAM so transfers done through the app go to a different recipient). There’s been malicious apps in the Play Store in the past, and rooted apps have way less oversight - some are literally just APK files attached to XDA-Developers posts or random blog sites.

johannesvanderwhales ,

I take your point, and I’m sure you’re right about the banks’ rationale, but in my own view it does not seem like it should be the banks’ decision to make.

qjkxbmwvz ,

As soon as a bank offers any sort of fraud protection, though, security becomes a bank issue (in addition to a “you” issue).

Not at all saying I agree with the banks on this, but I think that may be part of the thinking.

dan ,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

This is a good point. The bank needs to do as much as they can to reduce fraud risk, and they’ve probably found some correlation between rooted phones and a higher likelihood of fraudulent transactions. Some banks block VPNs for a similar reason - when logging in from a VPN, it’s harder for them to tell that it’s actually you vs if it’s an attacker that uses the same VPN service as you.

markstos ,

Your risk exposure is that you could lose your bank account balance. The banks risk exposure is that they could lose every bank account balance exploited by the same rooted phone vulnerability. So they evaluate risk differently than you do.

sepi ,

bro I gave my nana root on her eye phone and by the end of the week she had hacked half of North Korea - the other half thought her actions were a good example of juche ideals. It was crazy ngl

Aux ,

The problem is very simple - the majority of people are technically illiterate. Apple and Google saw the Windows XP security fiasco, looked at how many people use smart phones today and decided that giving users any rights is not worth the risk.

joyjoy ,

It’s not just root. They would prefer you not to have a custom keyboard either.

520 , (edited )

That's actually got a solid reason behind it.

It's because the OSK is just another program as far as Android is concerned. It can't directly look into the application, per Android specifications, but it CAN record key presses, even for passwords. It even receives context hints based on the metadata on the input box, so it knows when you're putting in a password. Then it can send your data off to unknown servers.

umbrella ,
@umbrella@lemmy.ml avatar

thats a bit ironic seeing how the default keyboard on most phones are a privacy nightmare.

520 ,

That it is, but at least it's not sending your card details to me.

untorquer ,

Yeah but why it’s sending details at all. There are FOSS options which are completely radio silent. Some password managers come with their own board.

markstos ,

Rooted mobile devices are a reasonable signal they been have hacked and security features might be disabled or work as expected.

It just banks, a lot of corporate security polices don’t allow rooted devices, as they could bypass mobile device management policies for devices owned by the company.

With laptops it’s a different story. Whether users have Mac, Linux or Windows, there’s a reasonable chance they have admin access too, so checking for root access is not such a useful signal there.

eya ,
@eya@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Rooted mobile devices are a reasonable signal they been have hacked and security features might be disabled or work as expected.

Rooted mobile devices are a reasonable signal that someone wants to actually own what they buy, and corporations want to make sure as few people think that as possible.

hemko ,

Windows/Macos/Linux are designed around the fact that the person managing the device has root access, Android and iOS are designed around noone having root access.

Sure it’s fine to mess around with rooted phone and look what’s inside, but essentially for your daily operations having rooted phone is unnecessary security risk.

eya ,
@eya@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Android and iOS are designed around noone having root access.

Yes and I consider that to mean I don’t own the device. And there are plenty of Android forks specifically designed around you having root access.

chonglibloodsport ,

The issue is that you don’t want to give some random untrusted process root access. You, the user, have root access as long as you’re capable of running processes as root, but that doesn’t mean you should.

There could be tons of apps on the iOS App Store or Google Play Store that are completely benign under the existing security model but do nefarious things when run as root. No one knows that for sure because they aren’t tested under root by Apple or Google.

The problem with root is that it’s giving the process the keys to the Ferrari. That’s long since been decided to be a bad security model. Far better to have the process request permission to access particular resources and you grant them on a case by case basis.

kick_out_the_jams ,

The issue is that you don’t want to give some random untrusted process root access.

It's been awhile since I've used anything but Magisk but usually you have to set root permissions per app, or you can get Magisk notification to request access.

bort ,

I just want to point out, that what you are saying sounds good in an ideal world. But the realitiy looks different. (I actually typed out some points, but then I remembered that I don’t want to engage in yet another lengthy internet-debate, that ultimately comes down to personal preferences and philosophy)

tocopherol ,
@tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Ah but I love reading these specific philosophical discussions on tech, I don’t blame you though

dumpsterlid ,

The important question is why smartphones are designed around not having root access and computers are?

What are the incentives at play?

The answer is obvious, tech companies wouldn’t have given users access to root control on their computers either if they knew what they were doing and thought they could have gotten away with it.

It is just circular logic claiming smartphones have to be this way, circular logic that provides a rhetorical smokescreen for the process of corporations taking our agency away from us over our lives and the tools that sustain us.

hemko ,

You’re free to install another operating system or variation on Android on your phone still. And if you decided to go with another Android such as Graphene, you’d still not want to root it because it’s a security risk.

520 ,

There's also the fact that on Win/Mac/Linux, you're interacting with the bank via a browser and not a bespoke app.

MonkderDritte ,

So just warn the user that it’s their own responsibility and all claims are waived, instead of just saying “no” ?

markstos ,

There is parallel with masking. The bank values the safety of the whole rather than the freedom to root for an individual. You stand to lose only your own bank balance. The bank stands to lose the funds of every rooted phone that contains a banking app exploit targeting them.

MonkderDritte ,

I mean, they get that anyway with malware and security exploits. Except that rooted phones usually have a root manager, which asks for permission if an app wants to do more. And i don’t think the root user listening into the app/their own account should be a problem; because in this case the problem is with the banks’ security practice.

Well, at least my bank doesn’t care about root or safety net.

markstos ,

The concern is not much phones rooted with intent by their owners, but phones rooted by malware without the owner’s consent:

thehackernews.com/…/this-new-android-malware-can-…

If there was a way to signal that a rooted phone was actually secure, malware would send that signal.

savvywolf ,
@savvywolf@pawb.social avatar

They 100% would stop you if they could.

It’s why Google’s website DRM thing was so scary.

RecluseRamble ,

Was? What did I miss? Even if it was discarded, there will aways be another attempt.

ramble81 ,

Basically Google wanted to put checksums in webpages and then not render the page period if the checksum didn’t match and said checksum could only be verified by “approved” browsers that had the correct certificate (which surprise was Chromium only browsers such as Chrome and probably Edge). As such you wouldn’t have been able to run any adblockers as that would change the checksum and the way the page was rendered. They could also then go one step further and do a Denouvo type set up to make sure the OS wasn’t being altered.

prettybunnys ,

Super useful technology for security purposes!

Super scary technology for literally everything else.

RecluseRamble ,

Yes, I know about what they attempted (actually published some of it already in an official repo).

But why you talk in past tense? Have they reverted the changes and publicly pinky-promised not to do it?

umbrella ,
@umbrella@lemmy.ml avatar

not was, is.

i dont think they dropped it.

savvywolf ,
@savvywolf@pawb.social avatar

Okay, so I originally was going to go in a long rant about how they’re still doing it, but decided that it didn’t really add much to the comment, so removed it.

Afaik they’ve, for now at least, shelved it in browsers, but are still going ahead in Android webviews (as part of their war on Youtube Vanced).

umbrella ,
@umbrella@lemmy.ml avatar

i guess they will probably try again with a new name later when the dust settles. can never trust them.

what about android webviews, i thought it isnt related to vanced? how do they plan to kill vanced this time?

interdimensionalmeme ,

MV3 is still happenning

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