cross-posted from: lemy.lol/post/25062075
Trunk Monkey Mobile would have been better. 🐒
Android's new anti-theft features
Submitted 7 months ago by funn@lemy.lol to technology@beehaw.org
https://blog.google/products/android/android-theft-protection/
Hirom@beehaw.org 7 months ago
Many of these are Google Play Services features, so it won’t be available to users open-source Android flavors that are google-free.
GingeyBook@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Which is a fraction of a fraction of Android users.
I’m all for de Googling if that’s what tickles your fancy, but ask anyone on the street and they’ll have no idea what you’re talking about
Hirom@beehaw.org 7 months ago
In that blog post, google does not commit to open sourcing these play services features, to integrate in future system upgrade.
I would love to be proven wrong.
ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 7 months ago
While I agree with you, the first step for user centric Android flavors regarding security is to support relocking the bootloader, with a custom (preferably the user’s own) digital signature. As long as we dont have that, an attacker could flash or just boot a custom bootloader through fastboot that does its own thing.
However that doesn’t really depend on Android system developers, I think, as the problem arises from the inferiority of almost every phone’s bootloader (chain), and probably that can only be reasonably solved by device manufacturers, because as I understand, bootloaders do a lot of heavily device specific things, so there cant really be a common (primary) bootloader, and making one for each phone is a lot of work that also involves lots of reverse engineering, and maybe the early bootloaders cant even be overwritten on some phones…
jarfil@beehaw.org 7 months ago
It’s kind of both Google’s and manufacturers responsibility. Google has made available a Dynamic System Updates feature:
source.android.com/docs/…/dynamic-system-updates
developer.android.com/topic/dsu
…but it requires manufacturer support to allow adding custom keys.
BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 7 months ago
Lol, who wants these anyways. One more reason not to use google play services. (Though I have google play services on this phone.)
One good thing you could try is use this app:
Find My Device
ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 7 months ago
Why would we need AI for that? That just makes the function unpredictable. There must be a real solution to detecting this.
funn@lemy.lol 7 months ago
That’s my concern too
jarfil@beehaw.org 7 months ago
It isn’t clear which of these features use Google servers and which ones don’t. The “Find My Device” definitely does, and has no place in AOSP. If they’re actually using AI to compare phone state with some tracked “habitual” behavior, it may also have no place in AOSP, but who knows.