Comment by realusername
24 days ago
> Well the secure boot is about the OS itself. Of course... you have to trust the OS.
So we're back to square one then, it's pointless because you can't trust mobile OS like you can with desktop OS.
Before talking about secure boot, Android needs a way to attest what's in the OS we're saying we are booting...
I'm not even sure Google themselves are fully aware of what's inside specific models.
> I don't know if there is much value in arguments like "in theory that's great, but in practice I don't trust anyone other than X so anything that is not X is worse".
I would rephrase it as why attesting that we have an unknown and outdated OS is valuable to the phone owner?
I'm really not sure what you are talking about. When I run GrapheneOS, "the OS" is open source. It includes some binary blobs, just like my desktop Linux.
> I would rephrase it as why attesting that we have an unknown and outdated OS is valuable to the phone owner?
I am not sure if you're genuinely not understanding what the secure boot does, or if you're just venting about the situation with mobile phones.
The secure boot is there to attest that the OS running on your phone is coming from the manufacturer and has not been tampered with by a malware. If you don't trust the manufacturer or if the manufacturer doesn't update the OS frequently enough, then I guess you should look for another manufacturer. GrapheneOS is pretty much up-to-date.
I'm talking about your average Android, not GrapheneOS which is atypical and represent pretty much nothing worldwide.
> you don't trust the manufacturer or if the manufacturer doesn't update the OS frequently enough, then I guess you should look for another manufacturer.
The only manufacturers in the world publishing device trees nowadays must be Fairphone and OnePlus because even Google stopped releasing them with the last Pixel. So here you go, you I gave you the entire list of manufacturers (two) for which to my knowledge secure boot provides some value to the phone owner (some others might exist), I'm willing to include GrapheneOS as a third case where it makes sense even if it's not the stock OS.
And the only rom in the world being updated on time is also GrapheneOS (yes, even Pixels still have delays)
> So here you go, you I gave you the entire list of manufacturers (two) for which to my knowledge secure boot provides some value to the phone owner
You say correct things, but you make wrong conclusions. Secure boot does provide value to the phone owner, period. Not against the manufacturer, but there is pretty much nothing consumers can do against the manufacturer except trusting it.