diff --git a/content/posts/fdroid-issues.md b/content/posts/fdroid-issues.md index b0b2ec7..b15bc0d 100644 --- a/content/posts/fdroid-issues.md +++ b/content/posts/fdroid-issues.md @@ -96,7 +96,7 @@ At the time of writing: *Overall statistics do not reflect real-world usage of a given app (people using old devices are not necessarily using your app). If anything, it should be viewed as an underestimation.* ## 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. The OS expects you to trust **an app repository as a single source** of apps, yet F-Droid isn't that by design as it mixes several repositories in one single app. This is important because the OS management APIs and features (such as [UserManager](https://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/UserManager)) are not meant for this and see F-Droid as a single source, so you're trusting the app client to not mess up far more than you should, especially when the privileged extension comes into the picture. +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 it mixes several repositories in one single app. This is important because the OS management APIs and features (such as [UserManager](https://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/UserManager)) are not meant for this and see F-Droid as a single source, so you're trusting the app client to not mess up far more than you should, especially when the privileged extension comes into the picture. This is also a problem with the OS first-party source feature. On that note, it is also worth noting the repository metadata format isn't properly signed by lacking whole-file signing and key rotation. [Their index v1](https://f-droid.org/2021/02/05/apis-for-all-the-things.html#the-repo-index) format [uses JAR signing](https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidserver/-/blob/3182b77d180b2313f4fdb101af96c035380abfd7/fdroidserver/signindex.py) with `jarsigner`, which has serious security flaws. It seems that [work is in progress on a v2 format](https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidserver/-/commit/3182b77d180b2313f4fdb101af96c035380abfd7) with support for `apksigner`, although the final implementation remains to be seen. This just seems to be an over-engineered and flawed approach since better suited tools such as `signify` could be used to sign the metadata JSON.