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Comment by kragen | Hacker News Reader

Currently, most users of computers running Linux own those computers, but do not have root access to those computers, because they are cellphones running Android. Instead, Samsung, Google, HTC, and random human rights abusers like Hacking Team have root access to them. Those users can currently obtain root access to their own computers only because of vulnerabilities in the kernels, hardware, and occasionally applications being used.

Given this very bad situation, I would argue that improving kernel security is at best ambiguously beneficial and possibly actively harmful to users. Maybe we should wait to improve kernel security — probably by switching to a different kernel — until we have somehow managed to escape this very dangerous situation in which people do not have root on their own computers.

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> I would argue that improving kernel security is at best ambiguously beneficial and possibly actively harmful to users

Kernel security is inevitably going to improve - the argument is over the length of time that's going to end up taking. If we continue to rely on the incompetence of those standing against us, we not only weaken those who don't have the knowledge or expertise to take advantage of their freedoms (and who end up with phones that are compromised by even more overtly evil actors than the phone vendors themselves), we eventually end up in a situation where the holes are blocked off and we have no method to achieve freedom at all.

This is a pointless philosophical debate: leaving kernel bugs unfixed will not make Android a more open platform. That problem needs to be fixed at the vendor level but there's no reason to make the rest of the Linux-using world less secure while waiting for that to happen, to say nothing of the likely much greater number of Android users who will see those exploits used by malware.

This is as far from a pointless philosophical debate as it could possibly be. We are discussing whether people should be able, in practice, to get root on their own phones. Leaving kernel bugs unfixed is the way that happens today. When people get root on their phones, they can then uninstall the malware that is already installed on the phone when they buy it.

At this point, Android user-owners are the vast majority of the Linux-using world, and indeed the computer-using world. Their needs and interests would outweigh those of everyone else if they were actually in opposition.

Aha. This is a nice motive for the no-more-Linus-in-Linux conspiracy theory, if one thinks that it takes a Linus-level principled stand to keep openness on this issue.

It is philosophically pointless, as you are arguing from an untenable position: if you don't trust your system provider, you shouldn't trust your system. Leaving kernel bugs unfixed does not make your system any more trustworthy.

From a practical point of view, it's a different matter: the exploits may allow you to regain some control over an untrusted device. But you still have the fundamental disparity of you trying to gain (software) control over an untrusted (hardware) device. That makes it a pointless philosophical debate regardless of practical use.

Oh, I hadn't thought of that interpretation of "pointless philosophical debate". You're right: considered as a purely philosophical debate, it's pointless. But considered as a debate over what practical measures to improve our contingent human reality in the face of non-ideal and poorly understood circumstances, it's far from pointless.

In the real world of actual humans with every day problems, control is often more valuable than trust and trust without control can lead to situations where there is no value at all :/.

Here's why I find this argument unproductive:

1. The vast majority of Android users don't know or care about it. They use what's on the device when they get it and if anyone's getting root, it's more likely to be a malware author than the user.

2. If the manufacturer locks you out, the benefit from a root exploit is time-limited until they ship an update and you're faced with losing root or having known security problems.

3. Using root when the manufacturer doesn't want you to is likely to be used as an excuse to deny support requests later.

It's not helpful to anyone to suggest a computing experience which can change at any time and requires them to delay things like security updates until a new exploit can be found. #1 and #3 combine, in that people are either going to avoid using an exploit if it could mean eating the cost of a new phone at any time or, worse, their buddy will do it for them but not help with the ongoing sysadmin work needed to keep the rooted phone secure. It's worth remembering that the only iPhone users at risk of the Hacking Team exploits were the ones who'd jailbroken the device; I'd bet anyone affected reconsidered how much installing ad blocker or pirated game was really worth.

If you want root, the only viable solution is to refuse to give money to vendors which don't let you have it, which currently means contacting your government to express your support for legal restrictions on devices which cannot be customized by the user. If you continue to support restrictive vendors with your wallet, absolutely nothing will change.

People running Nexuses have root on their smartphone, even better, they can replace the copy of android with a modified one (which is really what you want, not people running around with /sbin/su in their smartphone). Granted, there are blob everywhere and running a more recent kernel is hard (impossible?), and there isn't a sensible mechanism like secureboot on x86 to add the users key to the bootloader, but it's not that bad a situation. The problem is the rest of the Android ecosystem, and Microsoft phones, and of course Apple.

Besides, if free software can't provide security, people won't run free software. End of story.

> People running Nexuses have root on their smartphone, even better, they can replace the copy of android with a modified one

I don't understand: Nexus products don't ship with root access for users, and while users can obtain root access through various methods, they can do the same on almost any mobile device. They can also replace Android with various alternatives on almost any mobile device. How are Nexus products special in these regards?

On a Nexus phone, the pathway to unlocking the bootloader (and thus being able to install an alternative OS) is this:

$ fastboot oem unlock

On the vast majority of other Android phones, one must perform a customized attack against your phone in order to unlock the bootloader... and on some phones, that attack has not yet been discovered.

The choice between Google and Hacking Team seems super easy to me.

I also wonder if making root more available ends up enabling the bad actor at the phone store more than it ends up helping end users.

(I do get that many people see it as an matter of principle)

It's not a choice between Google on one hand and Hacking Team on the other. It's a choice between Google and probably Hacking Team, on one hand, and the user, whoever they decide to trust to help them root their phone (the actor at the phone store, who may be good or bad), and probably Hacking Team anyway on the other.

I meant someone at the phone store intervening without the user's knowledge. Improving user control without also enabling that tampering is a challenge. I will insist that there is a large group of users that will do exactly what the employee of the phone store tells them to do, even if it is easy to discover that this is a bad idea.

I also didn't thoughtlessly make that first point. Fixing 100 bugs does not have zero impact on whether Google or Hacking Team ends up with control.

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