Comment by seba_dos1
16 hours ago
Yes (well, kinda - attested systems can be and are vulnerable too), and remote attestation is completely orthogonal to that threat anyway. Securing the boot chain does not involve letting apps verify the environment they run in, it's an extra (anti-)feature that's built on top of secure boot chains.
It's also really incredible how people can see "user being in control" and just immediately jump to "user having to be an infosec expert", as if one implied the other. You can't really discuss things in good faith in such climate :(
Bootloader patching is just what you chose to use in your original false analogy. Letting apps verify the environment they run in is just as critical for the purposes of guaranteeing the digital identity. It’s all pieces of the puzzle.
It's not. I can guarantee my identity by e.g. scanning my ID card on a system with absolutely no secure boot chain. I can also guarantee a secure boot chain with my patched bootloader. Neither of these things require apps to verify the environment they run in.
> I can guarantee my identity by e.g. scanning my ID card on a system with absolutely no secure boot chain.
Your ID card is on your phone. Go ahead, guarantee you’re not using a duplicate of someone else’s ID card, that no one could duplicate your card, with a mainstream widely available consumer phone.
> I can also guarantee a secure boot chain with my patched bootloader.
Go ahead, show how your grandma automatically guarantees to interested parties that I or whoever else didn’t patch her bootloader to run a backdoored OS, while using a mainstream widely available consumer phone.
> Neither of these things require apps to verify the environment they run in.
Demonstrate a mainstream, widely available consumer phone that does these things without requiring apps to verify the environment they run it.
We can continue this infinitely, but if you keep making sweeping contrarian statements without contributing the proof required then it’s just not worth it.
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