<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: strcat</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=strcat</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Fri, 01 May 2026 08:28:00 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=strcat" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Copy Fail"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>AOSP and GrapheneOS have a small allowlist of socket types in the SELinux policies preventing using AF_ALG outside of the dumpstate service used to gather system wide debugging information for bug report zips. It's not available as attack surface on AOSP-based operating systems in practice.<p>The vulnerability also isn't present in standard AOSP GKI kernels (including the stock Pixel OS) or GrapheneOS kernels since they use a minimal kernel with tons of functionality disabled. Other OEMs may enable it but SELinux policy won't permit accessing it. OEMs can weaken SELinux policy but they're restricted by the neverallow rules which disallow permitting apps to access a list of non-standard socket types including AF_ALG.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Apr 2026 19:22:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47967061</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47967061</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47967061</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Copy Fail"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>AOSP not permitting setuid/setgid binaries is certainly useful attack surface reduction but isn't how it blocks exploiting this vulnerability. It blocks it via SELinux policy having allowlists for socket types which don't permit AF_ALG to be used outside of the dumpstate service.<p>The vulnerability also isn't present in standard AOSP GKI kernels (including the stock Pixel OS) or GrapheneOS kernels since they use a minimal kernel with tons of functionality disabled.<p>Kernel attack surface is mainly done via SELinux policies on AOSP including ioctl command allowlists per device type such as permitted GPU driver ioctl commands, io_uring only being permitted for a few core processes and much more. AOSP uses seccomp-bpf for apps, etc. too but it's mainly SELinux doing kernel attack surface reduction in practice.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Apr 2026 19:21:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47967060</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47967060</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47967060</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Your phone is about to stop being yours"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Lockdown Mode is focused on reducing the attack surface from Safari including the WebView and Apple services including iMessage/FaceTime. It does nearly nothing to protect against non-browser/non-messaging attack vectors in the OS or other apps. It's up to app developers to implement similar restricted modes and also baseline exploit protections. App developers need to explicitly opt-in to using the standard exploit protections used in many parts of the OS and Apple discourages doing it:<p><a href="https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Xcode/enabling-enhanced-security-for-your-app" rel="nofollow">https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Xcode/enabling-enh...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 11:19:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47946763</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47946763</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47946763</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Your phone is about to stop being yours"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>iPhones with Lockdown Mode enabled have definitely been exploited which is confirmed by leaked documents and statements from commercial exploit vendors. Lockdown Mode primarily reduces attack surface in Safari and from Apple services. It does very little to protect against other attack vectors such as messaging apps or physical data extraction.<p><a href="https://support.apple.com/en-ca/105120" rel="nofollow">https://support.apple.com/en-ca/105120</a><p>You're thinking of Apple saying they haven't detected a case of a device with Lockdown Mode exploited in the wild themselves. Extremely few devices use Lockdown Mode and Apple has very little insight into successful exploits so there isn't much opportunity for them to detect it in the first place. Lockdown Mode bundles everything together and has very inconvenient changes many people won't accept. That greatly reduces usage even by people fully aware of it who want a lot of what it provides. For example, there's<p>Apple has said they haven't seen a case of a device with Lockdown Mode being exploited which is extremely misleading. Apple doesn't have that much visibility into devices being exploited and would mostly seen failed attempts. All of the Lockdown Mode functionality being bundled together contributes to it barely being used. There's no opt-out system for most of it beyond disabling it as a whole. Only a subset of the Safari restrictions can be partially disabled per-app and per-site which doesn't fully restore web compatibility. It's more that hardly anyone is using it and that Apple doesn't have much insight into apps and the OS being exploited successfully in the first place. Lockdown Mode is definitely useful but people should read about what it actually does and compare that to how devices get exploited. Apple's memory corruption exploit protections aren't tied to Lockdown Mode.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 11:18:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47946757</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47946757</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47946757</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>They already have it and it isn't part of what needs to be developed. Qualcomm does that for them.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:24:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248850</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248850</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248850</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The initial supported devices will be flagships. They have regular, fold and flip variants of the flagships. The main advantage of flip phones is better one-handed use.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:21:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248797</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248797</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248797</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The initial supported devices will be flagships. They have regular, fold and flip variants of the flagships. The main advantage of flip phones is better one-handed use.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:21:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248794</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248794</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248794</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It has always been a hardware requirement to be able to unlock the device, install GrapheneOS and lock the device again. Verified boot has been a requirement since it was introduced for Pixels and the is main benefit of locking the device. There are additional security features enabled by verified boot. The overall hardware requirements are listed at <a href="https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices" rel="nofollow">https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices</a>.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:19:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248759</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248759</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248759</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>SailfishOS doesn't use the security features which are being worked on and doesn't keep up with kernel, driver and firmware updates. It doesn't use secure elements, verified boot or hardware memory tagging so it doesn't need the work being done on those things. They don't have similar requirements for hardware and have little use for what's being worked on for these devices.<p>The portions of SailfishOS specific to it are largely closed source including the user interface and application layer. It isn't possible to fork the overall operating system. It has much worse privacy and drastically worse security than the Android Open Source Project even without taking the GrapheneOS improvements into account. It's in an entirely different space and this has no connection to it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:16:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248719</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248719</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248719</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>90% of banking apps work on GrapheneOS. Curve Pay works for tap-to-pay.<p><a href="https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/" rel="nofollow">https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...</a> has a UK section.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:09:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248627</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248627</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248627</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Persistent app-accessible root greatly regresses OS security and breaks the verified boot security model. We're definitely not going to increase the number of build variants from 40 to 80 in order to provide an insecure option which would take away from efforts to properly implement features instead of doing it via hacks using apps running commands as root. If you want it you can make your own builds with it instead of us doubling the number of builds and deltas we need to make. Most of the people doing it are modifying the official builds and resigning them. Anyone who can understand the consequences of app-accessible root is capable of doing that.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:05:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248563</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248563</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248563</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Persistent app-accessible root greatly regresses OS security and breaks the verified boot security model. We're definitely not going to increase the number of build variants from 40 to 80 in order to provide an insecure option which would take away from efforts to properly implement features instead of doing it via hacks using apps running commands as root. If you want it you can make your own builds with it instead of us doubling the number of builds and deltas we need to make. Most of the people doing it are modifying the official builds and resigning them. Anyone who can understand the consequences of app-accessible root is capable of doing that.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:05:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248548</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248548</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248548</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Those devices have atrocious security at a hardware, firmware and software level. Their microphone kill switch also doesn't prevent audio recording. They aren't open hardware despite many attempts to mislead people with the marketing.<p>> The latter even has most of the modem software freed.<p>Pinephones have entirely closed source baseband firmware. They use a highly unusual cellular radio which includes both an incredibly outdated Qualcomm baseband processor with atrocious updates and security combined with an extremely outdated proprietary fork of Android running on an extra CPU core which isn't present in any mainstream smartphone. It's only replacing the unusual extra OS which has been done. That whole component doesn't exist on other smartphones and the only reason it's possible to replace it is because the whole radio has absolutely atrocious security. The radio is connected via a far higher attack surface USB connection providing far less isolation for the OS and the USB connection can be used to flash the proprietary Android OS via the fastboot protocol. The baseband firmware itself doesn't have any replacement available.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:03:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248521</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248521</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248521</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You're confusing Motorola Mobility with Motorola Solutions. These haven't been part of the same company since 2011. We would happily support devices from Motorola Solutions with their collaboration too but have no contact or partnership with them as they're an entirely different company. We want to support more devices meeting our requirements and if people have issues with one of the choices due to their opinions on geopolitics they can use another.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:50:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248275</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248275</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248275</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You're confusing Motorola Mobility with Motorola Solutions. These haven't been part of the same company since 2011. We would happily support devices from Motorola Solutions with their collaboration too but have no contact or partnership with them as they're an entirely different company. We want to support more devices meeting our requirements and if people have issues with one of the choices due to their opinions on geopolitics they can use another.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:49:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248267</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248267</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248267</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You're confusing Motorola Mobility with Motorola Solutions. These haven't been part of the same company since 2011. We would happily support devices from Motorola Solutions with their collaboration too but have no contact or partnership with them as they're an entirely different company. We want to support more devices meeting our requirements and if people have issues with one of the choices due to their opinions on geopolitics they can use another.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:48:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248247</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248247</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248247</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There's nothing GrapheneOS-specific about it and it doesn't prevent rooting. LineageOS doesn't officially support it any more than GrapheneOS does. It doesn't stop people doing it for either. Our recommendations aren't law.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:47:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248206</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248206</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248206</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>LineageOS also discourages and doesn't support replacing the core of the OS with a rootkit providing persistent app accessible root. GrapheneOS is no different from LineageOS in that regard. People do this with GrapheneOS regardless of our strong recommendation not do it. Our reasons for discouraging it aren't vague. It very directly harms the security model and is not a good approach to implementing any of the features hacked together through it. Those features should be properly implemented to fit within the overall approach taken by GrapheneOS. Giving root access to a huge portion of the OS harms security even if you never use the feature. It does not mean you can't do it, we only recommend you don't.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:46:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248195</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248195</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248195</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>LineageOS also discourages and doesn't support replacing the core of the OS with a rootkit providing persistent app accessible root. GrapheneOS is no different from LineageOS in that regard. People do this with GrapheneOS regardless of our strong recommendation not do it. Our reasons for discouraging it aren't vague. It very directly harms the security model and is not a good approach to implementing any of the features hacked together through it. Those features should be properly implemented to fit within the overall approach taken by GrapheneOS. Giving root access to a huge portion of the OS harms security even if you never use the feature. It does not mean you can't do it, we only recommend you don't.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:46:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248185</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248185</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248185</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by strcat in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Motorola Signature and Motorola Razr Fold are ranked above the Pixel 10 Pro on <a href="https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/" rel="nofollow">https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/</a>. Pixels have fantastic camera hardware and software which is fully functional on GrapheneOS which isn't something we need to lose on a Motorola flagship. There will be much better CPU and GPU performance via Snapdragon too. The compromises are mostly in terms of getting some security improvements while losing others but we'll still be able to meet all of our official security requirements.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:43:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248137</link><dc:creator>strcat</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248137</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47248137</guid></item></channel></rss>