Comment by Flip-per
15 hours ago
Do you trust the banking app installed from Aurora enough to do your online banking? I don't, and I really wish there would be a decent way to verify that the installed/provided apps are legit. For me this is the biggest downside of using GrapheneOS, which I'm otherwise extremely happy with.
(for me, the whole point of using GrapheneOS is privacy and not sending data to Google, so using the PlayStore is not an option)
Android apps are signed. Can't you verify the signature?
Can you?
I'm pretty sure if I try calling my bank or searching the website to confirm the developer's public key fingerprint, there's not going to be any answer. You have to ask Google's servers to give you the APK and trust what it gives you, either via the front-end called Aurora or the front-end called Play Store
Privacy Guides is building a database of signing keys with a verifier app:
https://github.com/privacyguides/verified-apps-android
https://github.com/privacyguides/verified-apps/
I think in general trust is established for Play Store apps by downloading the app with the Play Store on a phone with Google Certified Android. Then the app can get the signing key for storage in the database. Then this can be used to verify APKs downloaded outside the play store.
Maybe not in practice, but in theory, it works. I don't think there's a better way of handling this without relying on some centralised authority (Google) to validate the authorship of an app, which is hardly desirable.
Doesn't AppVerifier allow you to do just that?
Doesn't Aurora download the packages directly from Google?
Presumably the parent does not want to have to trust Aurora to do that