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NooneAtAll3 5 hours ago

have fairphone looked into supporting GrapheneOS? what exactly is missing there other than "it's not Pixel"?

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Telaneo 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The hardware doesn't support the relevant security features GrapheneOS requires.

https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices

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NooneAtAll3 5 hours ago | parent [-]

yes, yes, I know the usual song and whistle. That's why I'm saying "other than It's-Not-Pixel"

I'm asking for details

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svpk 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's a pretty concrete list so it's unclear to me what you mean. They're also going to support some of the upcoming Motorola phones so it's not just pixels.

I think the short answer of what they'd need to do in a practical way is to release a phone that uses one of the latest Qualcomm processors (those have the required hardware security features), make sure they have at least 5 years of driver support and commit to keeping the phone up to date, allow for relocking the bootloater (they might already do that). And I think that's basically it, the Graphene project would be able to take things from there.

Realistically given that they tend to source older/weaker processors for reasons related to their goals it's unlikely they would source a processor with the required security features for their next model, but that's just a guess.

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Telaneo 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Fairphone hasn't talked about GrapheneOS at all, instead opting to be in bed with Murena and /e/os, so I doubt they've even bothered to read the list of hardware requirements. They didn't bother with the Fairphone 6, which was released barely a year ago.

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warrantisall 2 hours ago | parent [-]

On the opposite, GrapheneOS team explicitly refuses to cooperate with Fairphone. See for yourself on their Twitter feed: https://nitter.net/search?f=tweets&q=fairphone+from%3Agraphe...

	▲	microtonal 2 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Fairphone 6 does not fulfill the hardware requirements (secure enclave, MTE, etc.), nor software requirements (monthly firmware updates, etc.). So there is nothing that GrapheneOS can do at this point. The ball is in Fairphone's court if they want this, but Fairphone seems more interested to cooperate with /e/OS, whose CEO proclaims security hardening is for pedophiles and spies (thereby fueling the narratives that bring chat control and such nonsense). Motorola is going to make devices that fulfill the requirements and GrapheneOS is cooperating with them.
	▲	Cider9986 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>GrapheneOS smearing Fairphone as not secure in 3..2..1.. GrapheneOS would love to support more devices, that "smearing" is explaining that a company doesn't make secure devices, which is completely correct criticism. Fairphone for various reasons is not able to or willing to achieve the hardware requirements. It's not easy to create some of the worlds most secure devices.

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Cider9986 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It would take extensive work to achieve the hardware requirements and the capability for an OEM that isn't able to develop their own chips with Memory tagging enforcement (mte) which the Snapdragon 8 Elite used in the upcoming Motorola phones will have. It won't be cheap and it won't be easy.

Google has set the bar high with their security features.

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warrantisall 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

GrapheneOS smearing Fairphone as not secure in 3..2..1..

I wish all smartphones were as easily repairable as Fairphone. The entire battery care stack would become unnecessary.

	▲	microtonal 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I don't have anything to do with GrapheneOS (only using it on a phone), but security of Fairphone is not great, like many other Android phones it does not have a separate secure enclave to store secrets, but instead relies on a TrustZone-based TEE, which is often vulnerable to side-channel attacks (e.g. see the recent attack where a lot of MediaTek phones could be decrypted in seconds, even in BFU). Note: iPhone has had a secure enclave since iPhone 5s (2013), Pixel since 3 (Titan M, 2018), and Samsung flagships since S21 (I think? Knox Vault, 2021). They also do firmware updates very irregularly even though Qualcomm does monthly bulletins and Fairphone's firmware is known to be full of CVEs. They also have a bad history of updating Linux kernels, e.g. Fairphone 4 is on an ancient Linux kernel. Fairphones also miss modern security mitigation techniques like MTE. To be fair, this applies to many Android phones outside Google Pixel and Samsung flagships. Aside from that, repairability is nice, but the most common early failures on the Fairphone 6 seem to be broken volume buttons, for which Fairphone does not offer a replacement and an issue where the logic board dies during charging, which is also not user-replaceable.