<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: summm</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=summm</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 18 Jun 2026 06:53:34 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=summm" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My opinion: Any kind of attestation that is delivered to a non-user-controlled server about the state of a user's end device that the user (possibly using means outside of the end device) cannot change will be abused, e.g for anti-competitve purposes.
I am hearing lots of arguments that grapheneOS is more secure (it is) and should therefore be included in remote attestation.<p>The pinning you are proposing, does it imply that there is again some certification of the "official" GrapheneOS, versus e.g. the user's own fork of GrapheneOS?<p>How would any of the existing proponents of remote attestation agree to anything like this, given what we consider abuse is exactly their reason of implementing it in the first place? 
Here, VW wants to stop use of the API by anything else than their App, in order to stop hobbyists and sell API access to commercial middle men. If the user could pin their own software's attestation or even register an arbitrary public key to cover updates, then the user would as well be able to code his own API client that just emulates the attestation.
Is there any write up or discussion of the pinning you propose?<p>I am really not yet convinced how you want to counter the inevitable abuse that app developers and service providers will subject the user to if the OS security model  gives them that kind of power over  the user's end device.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 17 Jun 2026 22:40:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48577998</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48577998</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48577998</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The GrapheneOS supporters are not on our sides, apparently. The seem to actually like remote attestation. They just don't like that they are not in on Play Integrity. But what is won if attestation includes official GrapheneOS releases but would still otherwise be exactly the same evil stuff that takes control of the user's device?<p>I still am hoping that at one point they understand the full consequences of remote attestation. There are some signs they start to notice, but it's slow...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 17 Jun 2026 21:10:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48576971</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48576971</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48576971</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Mozilla Added Google Play Integrity to Firefox for Android]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2046154">https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2046154</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48563000">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48563000</a></p>
<p>Points: 15</p>
<p># Comments: 3</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 22:19:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2046154</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48563000</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48563000</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "Volkswagen blocks Home Assistant by requiring client assertion"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Depends. In some sense EU companies are quite afraid of the GDPR. Privacy is used in a twisted way in that argument: if any privacy relevant data is exposed to another party, and there is any incident down the line, they fear they could be made responsible. So they to block you as a user to access your own data.<p>Of course, if that privacy risk came from them storing and selling your data, they happily accept that, you are right in that regard.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 30 May 2026 09:20:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48334292</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48334292</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48334292</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "Volkswagen blocks Home Assistant by requiring client assertion"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>They already add cryptographic authentication to some CAN messages, so you can't change them. It is only a matter of time until they add encryption.<p>This is mostly a corporate problem of risk aversion in my opinion. Some department 
writes down a risk assessment with a list of miniscule risks, for example of some 3rd party app backend being hacked. Or just a headline "Tinkerer hacked his car to use with his home assistant" in the local press.
This list circulates, and since nobody in the middle management wants to be responsible for anything, and there is no officially approved positive use case, draconian countermeasures are drafted and constructed one by one.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2026 08:53:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48320734</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48320734</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48320734</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "Brussels launched an age checking app. Hackers took 2 minutes to break it"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Only "open" in a twisted sense, and definitely not user-controlled: Remote attestation per definition means to accept only pre-approved operating systems. If anybody builds an implementation, regardless whether it is aosp-compliant or not, this will be excluded, until the App developer or someone in the chain explicitly approves that implementation.
That is the whole purpose of that technology. 
Including GrapheneOS in that pre-approved list just shifts power from Google and the App Developer to GrapheneOS Developers and the App Developer. Nice for GraphenOS, still bad for users and devs of any other OS variant or platform.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 14:27:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935135</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935135</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935135</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "Brussels launched an age checking app. Hackers took 2 minutes to break it"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Their security model requires remote attestation. So, open, user-controlled platforms cannot be used. Of course some other future locked-down linux-based OS might be usable.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:00:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47850649</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47850649</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47850649</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "The Downfall and Enshittification of Microsoft in 2026"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Another "blog" that doesn't even offer an RSS or Atom feed...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 07 Apr 2026 13:08:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47674782</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47674782</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47674782</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "Wired headphone sales are exploding"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah but many devices still do not support it, and if they support it, then badly, or they hide it.<p>There is not even a USB-Bluetooth adapter that would enable LE Audio on Linux. (Besides the hacky ones that contain a full Bluetooth stack and present as USB-Audio, but those come with their own problems.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:15:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47382792</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47382792</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47382792</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "Unified Attestation: open-source alternative to Google Play Integrity"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In other news: "Unified Torment Nexus: open-source alternative to Google Torment Nexus"<p>See also <a href="https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116200110686604617" rel="nofollow">https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116200110686604617</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 10 Mar 2026 10:42:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47321480</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47321480</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47321480</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Microwaves are a bad example. The cheaper ones are white labels basically all made in the same factory in China. The customer has no way to know if the slightly more expensive one is actually more durable or, much more likely,  just the same, but generates more profit for the intermediaries. In this situation it is wiser to get the cheaper one.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 02 Mar 2026 22:43:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47225250</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47225250</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47225250</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Motorola omitted a magnetometer in some of their models. This was especially heinous as the "compass needle" can be emulated to some degree by fusion if gps and rotation/acceleration sensors, so the user wouldn't immediately notice the total lack of a compass.
Since then I am always wary of what seemingly essential part of a phone they will omit this time...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 02 Mar 2026 10:15:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47215995</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47215995</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47215995</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In fact Motorola did the opposite: they recently announced that in their opinion they found a loophole in the EU ecodesign regulation that they will exploit in order to not provide updates for some of their cheaper phone models.
After that, why would anyone trust any of their promises for other models?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 02 Mar 2026 10:08:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47215936</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47215936</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47215936</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Motorola, the one company that still tries to evade the EU ecodesign regulations? 
Other vendors just provide the required 5+ years of updates, but Motorola loudly and publicity announced that they saw a loophole in the wording and would use it as an excuse to not provide updates for some models.
This is despicable and worthy of a boycott.<p><a href="https://www.heise.de/en/news/5-years-of-updates-Which-smartphone-manufacturers-are-adhering-to-this-11163863.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.heise.de/en/news/5-years-of-updates-Which-smartp...</a><p>"Operating system updates: From the date of end of placement on the market to at least 5 years after that date, manufacturers, importers, or authorised representatives shall, if they provide security updates, corrective updates, or functionality updates to an operating system, make such updates available at no cost for all units of a product model with the same operating system."</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 02 Mar 2026 10:04:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47215909</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47215909</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47215909</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>They actually already do in the EUDI wallet reference implementation. There, as this is part of a more general ID system, they probably want to avoid that people duplicate or export IDs.
In case of a privacy preserving age check, the fear could be that a copied private key could be enough to generate unlimited age proofs, indistinguishable from the original app instance.
In another thread someone gave an even lazier argument: the eudi wallet requires hw backed keys by law regardless, and the laziest implementation would be device attestation...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:59:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131421</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131421</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131421</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>At least that establishes that you don't care about civil rights :|</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:48:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131330</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131330</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131330</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Nope, it is my system currently. I hope we won't go back to GDR where the government needed to approve eachtypewriter.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:43:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131287</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131287</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131287</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You forgot to mention the additional remote attestation shackles you put on that trenchcoat.<p>Note that I - as opposed to the posts parent - used an official <i>trusted</i> CA as an example.<p>TLS: I see your ID with some governments signature in your hand, I trust you to be you.
EUDI: I see a note you wrote and I see some signed documents that you have just been to the government brain scanner, which attests you are not faking that note, and as a nice side effect the scanner scans other things in your brain, e.g.  that you watch every advert diligently, send your current location regularly to your local police office and other things.<p>The problem is you are not creating a government issued single purpose device but you are confiscating something many user experience as a brain extension to be under the government's control as a whole.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:36:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131210</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131210</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131210</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Unfortunately not. They will use even the most privacy preserving protocol to push remote attestation of end devices. Which in itself is a stepping stone making their next steps much easier.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Feb 2026 22:55:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47130215</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47130215</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47130215</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by summm in "The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Technically, if your phone needs to be remote attested, it can be considered a government system, not a user's system.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Feb 2026 22:42:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47130052</link><dc:creator>summm</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47130052</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47130052</guid></item></channel></rss>