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Update Wonderfall's blog post
Signed-off-by: tommytran732 <contact@tommytran.io>
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@ -98,7 +98,9 @@ At the time of writing:
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*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.*
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## 4. General lack of good practices
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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.
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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) which can be used to prevent a user from installing third-party apps) 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.
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There is indeed a serious security issue with the OS first-party source feature being misused, as the privileged extension makes use of the `INSTALL_PACKAGES` [API](https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.permission#INSTALL_PACKAGES) in an insecure manner (i.e. not implementing it with the appropriate security checks). The privileged extension accepts any request from F-Droid, which again suffers from various bugs and security issues and allows user-defined repositories by design. A lot can go wrong, and bypassing security checks for powerful APIs should definitely not be taken lightly.
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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.
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@ -206,8 +208,8 @@ Some people tend to exaggerate the importance of Google in their threat model, a
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If you don't have Play services installed, you can use a third-party Play Store client called **[Aurora Store](https://auroraoss.com/)**. Aurora Store has some issues of its own, and some of them overlap in fact with F-Droid. Aurora Store somehow still requires [the legacy storage permission](https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore/-/blob/26f5d4fd558263a89baee4c3cbe1d220913da104/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml#L28-32), has yet to [implement certificate pinning](https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore/-/issues/697), has been known to sometimes retrieve wrong versions of apps, and [distributed account tokens](https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore/-/issues/722) over [cleartext HTTP](https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore/-/issues/734) until fairly recently; not that it matters much since tokens were designed to be shared between users, which is already concerning. I'd recommend against using the shared "anonymous" accounts feature: you should make your own throwaway account with minimal information.
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You should also keep an eye on the great work **GrapheneOS** does on [their future app repository](https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Apps). It will be a simple, secure, modern app repository for a curated list of high-quality apps, some of which will have their own builds (for instance, Signal still uses their [original 1024-bits RSA key](https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/9362) that has never been rotated since then). Inspired by this work, a GrapheneOS community member is developing a more generic app repository called [Accrescent](https://twitter.com/lberrymage/status/1475307653089792003). Hopefully, we'll see well-made alternatives like these flourish.
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You should also keep an eye on the great work **GrapheneOS** does on [their future app repository](https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Apps). It will be a simple, secure, modern app repository for a curated list of high-quality apps, some of which will have their own builds (for instance, Signal still uses their [original 1024-bits RSA key](https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/9362) that has never been rotated since then). Inspired by this work, a GrapheneOS community member is developing a more generic app repository called [Accrescent](https://accrescent.app/). Hopefully, we'll see well-made alternatives like these flourish.
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*Thanks to the GrapheneOS community for proofreading this article. Bear in mind that these are not official recommendations from the GrapheneOS project.*
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*Post-publication note: it's unfortunate that the release of this article mostly triggered a negative response from the F-Droid team which prefers to dismiss this article on several occasions rather than bringing relevant counterpoints. Some of their core members are also involved in a harassment campaign towards projects and security researchers that do not share their views. While this article remains a technical one, there are definitely ethical concerns to take into consideration.*
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*Post-publication note: it's unfortunate that the release of this article mostly triggered a negative response from the F-Droid team which prefers to dismiss this article on several occasions rather than bringing relevant counterpoints. Some of their core members are also involved in a harassment campaign towards projects and security researchers that do not share their views. While this article remains a technical one, there are definitely ethical concerns to take into consideration.*
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