Comment by cowlevel

5 days ago

FWIW, GrapheneOS can't be rooted. It's far more safe for the bank than any other version of Android.

GrapheneOS doesn't have app accessible root and has it limited to a tiny set of processes where it's still largely contained via SELinux. Debug builds of GrapheneOS have root for Android Debug Bridge (ADB) and it doesn't limit how people can modify it. We don't recommend using a debug build on a production device and people should at least set ro.adb.secure=1 if they do.

GrapheneOS is an open source project and people can make their own builds with arbitrary modifications. We recommend not adding a third party system giving root access to a large portion of the OS and making it possible to grant to apps with a dialog since it greatly reduces security if it isn't used. People can do what they want regardless of our recommendations.

Modifying GrapheneOS in any way creates a new OS which is no longer GrapheneOS itself. Forks of GrapheneOS must come up with their own name and branding if they're going to distribute their modifications. We don't want software which isn't GrapheneOS being confused with it.

It absolutely can be rooted by building it from source. And having this ability is what makes the project open.

  • Then it's not GrapheneOS and your bank won't recognise it as GrapheneOS, it will recognise it as some emulator pretending to be GOS and will refuse to let you log in.