Request: Google Play signed download alternative #127
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Hey @countrygeek, let me provide a little color on why I've been reluctant to distribute APKs outside of Google Play. First, I'm concerned primarily with the security of our users, and am interested in targeting a demographic that does not know what a checksum or signature is. You might call them "newbies," but personally I think we're doing a good job if these are the bulk of our users. It may be an unpopular opinion, but I think the two worst security moves that an average user can make are rooting their device, or ticking the "allow 3rd party APKs" box in Android's settings. As bad as Google is, I believe that these actions make users susceptible to something that is much worse. We are reluctant to distribute raw APKs for a few additional reasons:
So that's where we are. I believe that the decision not to distribute prebuilt APKs achieves the following balance:
The thesis essentially being, if you aren't able to build TextSecure from source, you probably aren't capable of managing the risks associated with 3rd party sources. |
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FWIW I appreciate this posture. The usefulness of this app increases for me every time a friend or family member installs it ... most of whom aren't power users. |
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@moxie0 Thanks for clarifying, it does help me better understand your thoughts on it. However, I have some possibilities for what you mentioned.
Don't forget the people in Arab Spring. A quick download of an APK from a trusted party vs. an entire tool-chain when Google Play is blocked is more practical.
I believe, as rightly communicated in your other tool, Convergence.io - there must also be decentralization in layers of security. If Google has complete central control, and if they ever become compromised the entire network and users are then compromised; additionally, if it fails or is blocked it becomes impossible to access. That's why there needs to be fallback nodes/mirrors whatever you want to call them. Outside the scope of this project, I think there should be a repository which is peer-reviewed for security, as well having an established WebOfTrust, perhaps P2P based, that doesn't require users to uncheck "3rd party apps" and is open-source. FDroid for example (as soon as more security measures are in place) could become the official repository on Replicant devices. Then users would not have to uncheck 3rd party apps. That's when tools like this should be included in the repository and updated regularly, as well as being system apps in ROMs. It would also need to regularly pull commits and updates like Arch so there was no delay that puts users at risk. |
Generally speaking, comparisons to the PC world are not going to resonate with me. The security model for desktops (unix-based and windows-based) is completely broken, and I think the mobile environment should be a chance to rectify our past sins, not copy them. The current situation is that it's not (rightly!) possible for a 3rd party app to automatically install an APK. This fundamentally prevents auto-updates from being a reality outside of Play.
Unfortunately, circumvention problems extend beyond the download. RedPhone depends on GCM, and soon TextSecure likely will as well. My sense is that other projects are better positioned to deal with circumvention in the general case.
Actually, the malware incidence inside of the Play Store is exceptionally low. Compare it to desktop malware, and it's nonexistent. The bulk of mobile malware (drudged up by AV companies to justify their existence) has been in 3rd party app stores and random drive-by downloads. And the problem with depending on mobile AV is that mobile AV is a complete joke, even more so than desktop AV. These apps have no system integration, so they literally can't do anything other than look at a 3rd party APK at install time. It's quite easy to evade any signature detection and then simply disable the AV app. This is already happening. Again, I feel like we should be desperately trying to avoid what we inherited with the desktop paradigm, rather than reproducing it.
A good crash reporting solution is essentially a product in itself. There are entire companies built around mobile crash reporting, but as far as I've seen, none of them are as good as the default Play reporting. To ask that I develop and maintain my own is a big ask. I can't emphasize how important this is to the project.
Build me a high quality stats reporting solution with a nice web interface that displays graphs and trends of time. Then manage the server side hosting for me, and I'll use it. =)
This is actually how the Play Store works right now. Google does not have complete control over all updates: I sign all APKs with my own code signing key that is kept offline. These signatures are enforced by the PackageManagerService on each user's device, not by the Play Store itself. The mechanics are very similar to TACK (http://tack.io), which is what we're currently advocating for the TLS world. This is in huge contrast to how the bulk of apps on fdroid are distributed. Most are not signed by the developers, but by fdroid itself, with keys that they keep online. I believe this is a dangerous situation, and is one of the primary reasons (along with having to enable 3rd party sources) that I don't recommend using fdroid. |
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I am happy to see this issue discussed here and i would like to add another user requesting this app to be available from outside Google Play. I do not use Google Play since I do not wish to bundle my phone with a Google account. I do see your reasoning in why you are reluctant to support anything else, but I think you should reconsider this, at least for alternatives that actually care about security and open source software. I fully agree that decentralization is a vital requirement for secure designs and that monopolies should be avoided. History shows many examples. For my daily use I use fdroid exclusively, since I see the need for a trustworthy source of applications and an update mechanism. Fdroid provides this for me at the level that I require. Yes, some details could be improved (such as statistics), but I think it's very much a step in the right direction. I do believe the fdroid folks are in general very open to suggestions. I very much wish I could get the most recent TextSecure through fdroid as well rather than having the choice between running a version older than Methusalem or building from source. Avoiding the former should be in your very own interest as the author of the app. The latter requires me to constantly monitor for updates and bugs and is manual work which I wish I could avoid. Since most of my friends and family use cyanogenmod and fdroid as well I am very reluctant to suggest them to upgrade to TextSecure, since that would put me in the apk maintainer position. For these reason I would greatly appreciate to see TextSecure back in fdroid, and I would very much hope you reconsider your position on this. |
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@moxie0 Might I give my five cents here? I've gone through all the discussions on this, and this is my overall conclusion: Your concern here seems to be the safety of your users. You don't want them ignoring the availability of newer versions, or downloading APK's from sources that don't provide you with use/device statistics. Is that correct? Now, here's my point of view - What about the users who do not want to use Google Play and do not want to follow your advice? Surely you can consider that as harmful to them - but that's their problem, not yours. And the amount of people who use F-Droid is in no way comparable to the amount of people who use Google Play. Moreover, I would certainly not think that by keeping F-Droid from packaging your software you are getting more installs on Google Play. Most of the people who use it would never consider using Google, thus you're just making life harder for these people. Nor are you winning anything by that prohibition. Please do tell me if I understood anything the wrong way. I just started packaging for F-Droid as a hobby, and I'd like to package your software in the following days. Hopefully there won't be a problem with that. |
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mvdan, thanks for adding this. Indeed I would never consider using Google Play, that was the point I was trying to make. I build it myself until I find an alternative way of getting the app in a recent version. Unfortunately my grandma can't do that (building it herself) so she can't use it. ;) |
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If the app uses GCM will it be usable without Google Play? F-Droid admin does not keep the keystore online: how could one come to that conclusion? He signs the apks, thus we know if updates are also signed by him; I don't see why this fact should upset the whole idea of sharing software as set out in the GNU GPL. |
But I'm reluctant to distribute APKs outside of the Play Store precisely because I care about the security of TextSecure users. Additionally, many folks seem to think that not adding a Google account to their device is a privacy win, when that's rarely the case. If your device has GSF installed, the privacy implications are the same whether you have a Google account associated or not.
It's not just statistics. The problem is the security model. The bulk of applications distributed through fdroid are signed by keys that belong to the fdroid maintainers, and which are kept online. This means that the fdroid maintainers themselves, or any attackers who compromise fdroid, are capable of pushing malware to your device. This is a huge contrast to Google Play, where every app is signed by keys that belong to the app's developers. Google, or attackers who compromise Google, are not capable of pushing rogue updates.
Again, I know that this is probably an unpopular opinion, but if you've set your "less technical" friends and family up with cyanogenmod and fdroid, I believe that you've very seriously compromised their security. Both cyanogen and fdroid seriously compromise the security gains that we've made in the mobile environment and are a reversion back to the desktop security model:
It's exactly this (setting less technical users up with things like fdroid) that I am afraid of. For you, compiling and installing from source once a week is literally three commands: git pull && ant release && adb install -r bin/TextSecure-release.apk. For your friends who are not technically capable of doing this, I believe that this means they aren't savvy enough to tick "allow 3rd party sources" responsibly. I totally agree that 3rd party app store alternatives seem cool, but until they're done securely and correctly, I'd prefer not to participate. |
I can't willingly participate in something that I believe is a bad idea. I can't sign and distribute packages through fdroid, because I believe that fdroid is harmful, and I don't want to endorse harmful activity. I understand that many of the people commenting here probably understand how insecure fdroid is, but value a full OSS stack more than the security of their device. That's fine, but I think anyone that completely understands the risks is also completely capable of building TextSecure from source themselves. It's the people that don't understand the risks that I'm worried about.
It's my preference that you don't. I spend a lot of time on this project, and I'm certain that having APKs floating around which are signed by someone else will inevitably cause problems for me in the future. I realize that everyone here likely has their own projects that they spend their time on, but before jumping straight to the high-level decisions for the direction of this project, I would recommend that people who are interested in this project's direction start by committing a little bit of code here first, in order to get a feeling for this codebase and its challenges. |
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You're not being asked to participate in F-Droid, nor are you needed to sign or distribute any packages for it. And, as much as security seems to be quite subjective, I would not say F-Droid is insecure. Like @dalb8 stated, no keys are online, and the default downloads are through SSL. I see no big insecurity here. Even if there was, that's the risk the user is willing to take once he installs F-Droid and accepts the terms of service. Much like with CM - we are not bringing malware to the masses. I see it is your preference that we don't package it. But I don't understand the reason. We can always add something like the following to the description:
Would that suffice? It has been said before that you "forbid" us from packaging it, but that's not what I understood. You'd rather not have people install it from non-Google sources, but we can still package it as-is without a problem. |
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It's my preference that you don't. I would also reiterate that it might behoove you to commit even a single line of code before you jump straight to signing your own releases. =) |
Although you might be right, I have never done any serious Java. Still getting started with C++. Perhaps someone else would be of some use to you. But so far all I've been doing is packaging. |
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The only secret is to begin. Pick one of the open issues, start working on it, and you'll figure it out as you go. |
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@moxie0 -- As one of the former users of TextSecure via fdroid, and someone who values libre software and security, I'd like to say that I appreciate your points, and feel pretty good about my decision to keep using TextSecure as deployed by the Play store. However, I'd still prefer to use fdroid for as many apps as I can, and I'd also like to have some sense of security when using it. As a compromise, do you think you could outline, either on fdroid's bug tracker or here, exactly what would need to be fixed in fdroid before you'd consider allowing TextSecure on it? Then, the people who want TextSecure in fdroid can fix those bugs, or work towards fixing them. Either way, everyone benefits: you get a definitive end to these issues, and fdroid gets more secure. As an FSF member, free software advocate, fdroid user, etc., I hope that if Moxie does this, it ends this discussion until those bugs are resolved. Moxie is the maintainer of a free software package; he's under no obligation to do even more work than he already has for our benefit; forcing him to repeat himself on bug reports like these is to no one's benefit. (At least one of the things mentioned in this thread is not necessarily an issue: there are some packages in fdroid that have packages signed by the maintainers, including the Firefox build, I believe.) |
ghost
mentioned this issue
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This is the current list of things that we need before we can distribute an APK outside of the Play Store. Any help completing these missing pieces would certainly be appreciated:
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"1) Cyanogen runs things as root, completely circumventing the development of a fine grained permissions system. They've also made a number of tradeoffs that further weaken its security." Sniffing phone communication, like motorola did? Or maybe you think about Trojans like Carrier iQ? Closed source (official) ROMs doesn't have weak security, there are completely compromised. Full of malware, trojans and backdoors.
If you have your official OEM ROM, you don't have to install any malware, you have all out of the box |
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I've read the whole conversation and I don't understand something : if someone want textsecure but don't want to use a google account and has better thing to do than learn how to compile an android software, he can either download a very very very old version or take an .apk compiled by someone on internet without knowing if the .apk he's downloading has been compromised or no. Do you really prefer these two insecure option for your users instead of releasing an official binary, compiled by your hands, right here ? Also I don't understand why the fact of not knowing how to compile a source code make you not enough responsible to untick the "third party app". I know many guys who know how to program and compile codes but they still can't avoid stupid viruses on Internet and next to them some people who can't even read a source code but are enough intelligent to know which app is good and safe for them. Your argument is invalid. "I spend a lot of time on this project, and I'm certain that having APKs floating around which are signed by someone else will inevitably cause problems for me in the future." If you really think this the most intelligent thing to do is to compile and sign yourself the .apk who will floating on internet. don't give the time to creepy black hats to do it before you. |
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@KaitoKito If you look at the number of open issues we have right now, we're substantially behind where we'd like to be in terms of providing support. We're at a place where raising our support load by even 1% would be really overwhelming, and my sense is that an official non-Play APK release without the 4 prerequisites I list above would have that impact. So I'd love to get a non-Play APK distribution channel going, but we need to do some work in order to make that happen smoothly. If this is something you're interested in seeing, the best thing you can do to help is to take on some of the work listed here: #127 (comment) |
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Too true: anybody can be careless, even clever people. However, I don't think it's fair to portray compiling apps as difficult. Some are, but not this one — give it a try! |
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Hello moxie, thank you for your discussion about this issue. There are many other developers out there, who close such issues very fast, avoiding the opinions and preferences of other users. I recognize you think the "security model for desktops (unix-based and windows-based) is completely broken" and "believe that fdroid is harmful, and [you] don't want to endorse harmful activity." As I understand it, your sense of security lies in the use of Google Play in combination with the deactivation of the ability to install 3rd party applications. The ability to create, sign and upload your app to the Playstore yourself gives you alone the full control of it. Nobody else should be able to provide any other (probably compromised) version of your app. Although I can understand the positive implications of this, I nevertheless strongly want to disagree with this perspective. First: It's condition is to trust two involved parties.
Now, it is of course essential, that security is not possible without the trust to anybody. So second: The problem with your concept is, that we - the users - do not have the choice who we trust. If we want to install the app, we are forced to trust you with packaging and to trust Google with providing it. If however, other people in an open community become involved in the distribution of applications and this distribution is transparent and replicable, the possibility of compromised software gets lower. Why is that so? And finally, I cannot emphasize enough the most important thing I believe security should have: The freedom of choice! If I think Google is untrustworthy, I should have the possibility to get my app elsewhere. If I believe F-Droid sucks, I should be able to get the apk from maybe another distributor or on the webpage of the author. If I believe, even this apk is compromised, I should have the possibility of compiling it myself. If people however need to trust one single instance, it gives this instance great power about them. And we all know: With great power comes great responsibility. And in the end, security remains entirely with the user. If he does not care or understand what it means (or what kind of security he desires), not your and not my concept will completely help him. By the way: P.S.: I installed Cyanogenmod on my device and cannot find any GSF. If I am missing it I would be interested in how my device may still phone home to Google. |
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I do not know if Google modifies your created package in some way, too. It may be unlikely, but I cannot be absolute sure they don't either. Who programmed the key-verification routines and how do they really work with all those Google Apps? You can be absolutely sure. PackageManagerService is OSS, so you (or anyone) can audit the code. (Please don't take this personally) You If you don't trust the packager, I think your only option is to build it yourself. Fortunately, we've gone to great lengths to ensure that this can be done by typing a single command: If you're concerned about trusting me to package the source, I'm not sure why you would be less concerned about someone random at F-Droid packaging the source. At least my signing keys aren't online! And finally, I cannot emphasize enough the most important thing I believe security should have: The freedom of choice! If I think Google is untrustworthy, I should have the possibility to get my app elsewhere. You don't have to convince me. I would love to distribute an APK outside of Play. Above, I've outlined the four missing pieces we need in order to do that. If this is something that you are interested in seeing happen, all it takes is helping us get those done. |
Just two quick comments:
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As it is for me. If that's not good enough somehow, I don't see how someone else building it is any different.
So every time any one of your packages needs to be updated, someone hand carries the source to an airgapped machine, plugs in the HSM with the key specific to that app, runs the build, and carries the signed APK back over to the networked machine? How do you scale that process across all of the apps you distribute? How do you physically store all of your HSMs? |
I'm not saying that our method is any better than yours or anyone else's. I'm just saying that argueing that it is less secure doesn't make sense either (edit: as far as I know or have been told)
The process is similar to what you say. There is the web server holding the site and the repo over http and https, and there's a machine without any kind of remote access that holds the keys and runs the builds. All of this is to be done separately for each repo, in fact a single fdroiddata dir can only handle a single repo. Repos should never share their keys with any other repo, at least we won't do that with the main repo. How do we physically store the sensible data? I don't have access to said machine (only one person does), so I'm guessing it is stored in a secure place in an encrypted file system. But that's only a guess following what I would do. Just to clarify, the building machine uses ssh to provide the hosting machine with the apks, the icons, the index, etc. This is all public if you check the fdroidserver python source. |
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My understanding is that the keys are offline only in the sense that the machine doesn't accept incoming internet traffic. The encrypted keys are stored on the same machine as the builds which are done in a VM. Theoretically, it allows for bit-for-bit reproducible builds, which would allow anybody to verify that an apk was built as described, negating the need for HSMs and such. |
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Would anyone mind posting the latest version of TextSecure? I'm currently running cynanogen without gapps and didn't feel like installing them to upgrade. Thanks! |
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@countrygeek Do you have a Linux box? Then you could build it by yourself (it's not too complicated). Pls. contact me by mail if you need help (your github account has no e-mail address connected for direct feedback). |
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@countrygeek Without gapps you can't use push messages, you'll be only able to send encrypted and unencrypted SMS |
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@agrajaghh @countrygeek You can use TextSecure without having an Google Play account. For some reasons, I can use my self-built version on all my phones and tablets without any problem. My devices however have Google Play Store installed, but as said, without an associated account ‒ the devices are not running CyanogenMod. |
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I think you don't need an google play account, but you need the google play services to be installed for push messages... |
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@agrajaghh wrote
@countrygeek : yes |
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Currently TS doesn't work without gapps because it uses GCM as a push network. Take a look at #1000 to monitor the progress on websockets. On 24. August 2014 15:47:06 MESZ, countrygeek notifications@github.com wrote:
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Thanks for the pointer on that thread @generalmanager :) @countrygeek While it's not particularly helpful here, I find this helpful for getting apk's for essentials not yet on F-Droid. (You can install with |
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@patcon : Thanks, I actually had tried using that but the site was down - appears up again now. It's definately the easiest way, vs. trying to get the ADT bundle up and running just to run TextSecure without Gapps. I have an unlimited data plan so I don't care about SMS charges. :) |
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I find it worrying that, to escape Google surveillance and profiling, I think it really calls for a priority revision. Find a way to do a checksum at least! |
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@Zeriuno this could be done by @moxie on the release page https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/releases see this → example https://github.com/schildbach/bitcoin-wallet/releases Moxie could simply additionally publish ‒ parallel to the publication in Google Play Store ‒ the release apks and their corresponding signature files in the TextSecure https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/releases page. Currently, there is only the source code. But there's no room for discussion, because AFAIK, he wants a secure channel for automatic updates, and only Google Play Store can do. |
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@Zeriuno I published checksums for versions < 2.0.8 on my TextSecure Wiki page https://github.com/Wikinaut/TextSecure/wiki/History-of-changes This not-so-well-known gpg command/option lists all avaliable message digests: |
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@Wikinaut: good! |
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Where there is no transparency, there cannot be any hope of either security or privacy. Seeing a privacy application depend on nonfree software to function is therefor a very sad thing to me, as its dependences undermine its purpose. A system is only as secure/private as its least secure/private component, so anything that has Google Play Services installed is already compromised. You also mention that a user has to enable third-party application installation to install outside the Google Play Store. While I'm not sure it will sway you, it's worth noting that for us Replicant users, we have to have that box unchecked to install anything outside of F-Droid's repository, meaning that by not offering it on F-Droid, you require us to enable third-party application installation. |
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@jtrig, maybe it's time to move on to more open alternatives like Tinfoil-SMS? |
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@SecUpwN No, because that's also not on Fdroid. Google Play only, so it's no better. |
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@rdsqc22, the developer of that App is extremely open to open source. Feel free to open up an Issue on his GitHub for that, I am sure this App will be available there sooner than you think. |
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@SecUpwN It looks like it used to be on Fdroid, but then got removed because the developer started using non-free binary blobs. https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/com.tinfoil.sms |
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Source, what is still limiting progress with this issue?
In other words, every single of @moxie0’s complaints has been fixed, so why is this still not happening? |
Maybe just because no-one told him yet ;-) I guess distributing TextSecure on F-Droid while Google Play Services are still required for it to run doesn't make too much sense. You could check out #1000 resp. the fork at https://github.com/JavaJens/TextSecure to help with that. |
Interesting. Could you point me to some information / docs on how this is supposed to work?
I don't think there is a solution for automated crash reporting without Google Play yet. |
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@brumsoel See https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/Deterministic,_Reproducible_Builds. For background on reproducible builds in general, see e.g. this talk at the 31C3 (slides on this page). |
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The reproducible build stuff is quite new and still a bit raw, but it does work. I'm happy to help get TextSecure integrated using this process for anyone who wants to take it on. As for automated crash reporting without Google Play, you can use ACRA then choose which backend you want it to upload to. |
This is now possible with beta calling, so non-GCM users are a part of beta calling by default. // FREEBIE
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This is now available here: https://signal.org/android/apk/ I don't recommend that people do this, but we've set this up as a harm reduction strategy since people are already running random APKs signed by other random people instead. |
and others
I was about to suggest this before reading the infamous issue 53. It is sad to see that FDroid and WhisperSystems could not work together, I truly enjoy both projects. Needless to say a google alternative is required - google more and more frequently involves itself in privacy violations. I am opening this ticket in hopes that an alternative of some sort is made.
Possibilities:
WhisperSystems creates it's own official FDroid repository, as did GuardianProject:
https://guardianproject.info/2012/03/15/our-new-f-droid-app-repository/
WhisperSystems provides an APK somewhere out there for people to download with simple instructions on how to verify it's not been tampered with.
In the event this is not done users not wanting Google will have to compile it from source, which although can be done, is a major inconvenience especially to newbies. Just for reference, there seems to be a large interest in migrating away from google. e,g, the NoGAPPS project:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?s=a7bf27eb98e3bcefb7e58fb46d09710b&t=1715375
I hope you all come up with a resolution. Thanks and keep up the great work! :)
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