x0rg
/
9x0rg.com
1
0
Fork 0
Code Releases Activity

details

This commit is contained in:
Wonderfall 2022-01-13 18:39:25 +01:00
parent 7223ed75da
commit 5df50f3ad1
1 changed files with 3 additions and 1 deletions
Show Stats Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

4
content/posts/fdroid-issues.md
View File

@ -73,7 +73,9 @@ Furthermore, F-Droid **doesn't enforce a minimum target SDK** for the official r
While it may seem bothersome, it's a necessity to keep the **app ecosystem modern and healthy**. F-Droid sends here the wrong message to developers (and even users) because they should care about it, and this is why many of us think it may be even harmful to the FOSS ecosystem. Backward compatibility is often the enemy of security, and while there's a middle-ground for convenience and obsolescence, it shouldn't be exaggerated. As a result of this philosophy, the main repository of F-Droid is filled with obsolete apps from another era, just for these apps to be able to run on the more than ten years old Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Let's not make the same mistake as the desktop platforms: complain instead to your vendors for selling devices with no decent OS/firmware support.
## 4. General lack of good practices
The F-Droid client allows multiple repositories to coexist within the same app. Many of the issues highlighted above were focused on the main official repository which most of the F-Droid users will use anyway. However, having **other repositories in a single app also violates the security model of Android** which was not designed for this at all. As a matter of fact, the new unattended update API from Android 12 that allows seamless app updates for app repositories without [privileged access](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fdroid.fdroid.privileged/) to the system (such an approach is not compatible with the security model) won't work with F-Droid. It should be mentioned that [Droid-ify](https://github.com/Iamlooker/Droid-ify/issues/20) is trying to figure out a way to make it work, although the underlying issues about the F-Droid infrastructure remain.
The F-Droid client allows multiple repositories to coexist within the same app. Many of the issues highlighted above were focused on the main official repository which most of the F-Droid users will use anyway. However, having **other repositories in a single app also violates the security model of Android** which was not designed for this at all. The OS expects you to trust an app repository as a single source of apps, yet F-Droid isn't that by design.
As a matter of fact, the new unattended update API from Android 12 that allows seamless app updates for app repositories without [privileged access](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fdroid.fdroid.privileged/) to the system (such an approach is not compatible with the security model) won't work with F-Droid. It should be mentioned that a third-party client called [Droid-ify](https://github.com/Iamlooker/Droid-ify/issues/20) is trying to figure out a way to make it work, although the underlying issues about the F-Droid infrastructure largely remain. Indeed, this secure API allowing for unprivileged unattended updates not only requires for the app repository client to target API level 31, but the updated apps also have to at least target API level 29.
Their client also lacks **TLS certificate pinning**, unlike Play Store which does that for all connections to Google. Certificate pinning is a way for apps to increase the security of their connection to services [by providing a set of public key hashes](https://developer.android.com/training/articles/security-config#CertificatePinning) of known-good certificates for these services instead of trusting pre-installed CAs. This can avoid some cases where an interception (*man-in-the-middle* attack) could be possible and lead to various security issues considering you're trusting the app to deliver you other apps.