News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central Distric... by krageon on Wednesday April 28, 2021 @07:30AM (#26968169)
You cannot reproducibly build signal, what you get in the play store is effectively closed.
Re:Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central Distric... by gruez on Wednesday April 28, 2021 @07:55AM (#26968308)
Re:Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central Distric... by tialaramex on Wednesday April 28, 2021 @07:52AM (#26968290)
You can build the core code, reproducibly.

As I understand it if you take this code, and the binary blobs of the code that does stuff like video calls, you can verify that's what is inside your Play Store APK.

Now, if you're a tinfoil hat wearer obviously you can consider that maybe the video call code secretly reads your messages and sends them to the FBI, or indeed that the Android OS just ignores this APK and when you install it you get something else entirely anyway.

But it sure looks like the source code is in fact for the app you get.

Re:Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central Distric... by dane-pgp on Wednesday April 28, 2021 @10:32AM (#26969802)
It would be nice if Android let you check the hash of the APK against a Binary Transparency log hosted by a third party. Google have even written extensively about this idea:

https://transparency.dev/application/add-tamper-checking-to-...

Re:Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central Distric... by psanford on Wednesday April 28, 2021 @11:02AM (#26970171)
Android does verify that any new versions of an APK are signed with the same signing key as previously installed versions. So you would have to compromise the signing key held by the developer in order to push an evil APK.