Yeah, as I am reading the landing page, the direction seems clear. It sucks, because as an individual there is not much one can do, and there is no consensus that it is a bad thing ( and even if there was, how to counter it ). Honestly, there are times I feel lucky to be as dumb as I am. At least I don't have the same responsibility for my output as people who create foundational tech and code.

I do sort of wonder if there’s room in my life for a small attested device. Like, I could actually see a little room for my bank to say “we don’t know what other programs are running on your device so we can’t actually take full responsibility for transactions that take place originated from your device,” and if I look at it from the bank’s point of view that doesn’t seem unreasonable.

Of course, we’ll see if anybody is actually engaging with this idea in good faith when it all gets rolled out. Because the bank has full end-to-end control over the device, authentication will be fully their responsibility and the (basically bullshit in the first place) excuse of “your identity was stolen,” will become not-a-thing.

Obviously I would not pay for such a device (and will always have a general purpose computer that runs my own software), but if the bank or Netflix want to send me a locked down terminal to act as a portal to their services, I guess I would be fine with using it to access (just) their services.

I suggested this as a possible solution in another HN thread a while back, but along the lines of "If a bank wants me to have a secure, locked down terminal to do business with them, then they should be the ones forking it over, not commanding control of my owned personal device."

It would quickly get out of hand if every online service started to do the same though. But, if remote device attestation continues to be pushed and we continue to have less and less control and ownership over our devices, I definitely see a world where I now carry two phones. One running something like GrapheneOS, connected to my own self-hosted services, and a separate "approved" phone to interact with public and essential services as they require crap like play integrity, etc.

But at the end of the day, I still fail see why this is even a need. Governments, banks, other entities have been providing services over the web for decades at this point with little issue. Why are we catering to tech illiteracy (by restricting ownership) instead of promoting tech education and encouraging people to both learn, and importantly, take responsibility for their own actions and the consequences of those actions.

"Someone fell for a scam and drained their bank account" isn't a valid reason to start locking down everyone's devices.

Why should I need a separate device? Doesn't a hardware security token suffice? I wouldn't even mind bringing my own but my bank doesn't accept them last I checked. (Do any of them?)

If the bank can't be bothered to either implement support for U2F or else clearly articulate why U2F isn't sufficient then they don't have a valid position. Anything else they say on the matter should be disregarded.

You shouldn't need a separate device, but we are quickly entering an era where a lot of banking (and other) apps will outright refuse to run or allow logins if it detects a rooted device, or play integrity fails.

In this way, the banks are asserting control over your device. It's beyond authentication, they are saying "If you have full control over your device, you cannot access our services."

I'll agree with you that they don't have a valid position, because I can just as easily open up a web browser on said rooted device and access just fine via the web, but how long until services move away from web interfaces in favor of apps instead to assert more control?

I have to use my phone to approve the web login to my account. My bank is working very hard to make sure that everyone uses the app for everything, including closing down offices and removing ATMs around the city.

A hardware token would not suffice. When you login with a hardware token it will generate some sort of token or cookie for further requests. This is where malware can steal that key and use it for whatever it wants. There is a benefit it knowing there is a high chance that the such a key is protected by the operating system's sandboxing technology. Without remote attestation you don't know if the sandbox is actually active or not.

On the contrary, a hardware token will suffice to thwart both phising and MitM which covers ~everything for all practical threat and liability models. What exactly is the concern here? A widespread worm that no one is yet aware of that's dumping people's bank accounts into crypto? It might make for a decent Hollywood plot but is pulling that off actually easier than attacking the bank directly?

Keep in mind that the businesses pushing this stuff still don't support U2F by and large. When I can go down in person to enroll a hardware token I might maybe consider listening to what they have to say on the subject. Maybe. (But probably not.)

Hypothetically on a fully controlled system you could prevent attacks like the sort of “hello this is Microsoft, we’ve identified a virus on your device, please download teamviewer and login to your bank account so we can clear it for you” type spam calls.

Or, hasn’t there been malware that periodically takes screenshots of the device? Or maybe that’s a Hollywood plot, I forget actually.

Keep in mind that a truly clueless user will most likely be running in a stock configuration. So long as that doesn't permit apps to tamper with one another (as is currently the case) there should be no issue. Google could even provide a toggle to officially root the phone and so long as flipping it wiped the device the problem would remain 99.9% solved because a scammer would be unable to pull the job off in one go.

By the time you reach the point that the user is doggedly following harmful step by step instructions over the course of multiple callbacks there is nothing short of a padded cell that can protect him from himself.

Unless you mean to suggest somehow screening such calls? A local LLM? Literal wiretapping via realtime upload to the cloud? If facing such a route society would likely be better off institutionalizing anyone victimized in such a manner.

> hasn’t there been malware that periodically takes screenshots of the device?

Yeah, it's called Recall and its baked into Windows as a "feature."

It's unfortunate because it's actually incredibly useful functionality. If only they hadn't packaged and marketed it in quite the way they did. If there was ever a feature that needed to be guaranteed local only, zero third party integration, zero first party analytics, encryption tied to a TPM that was it.

How does it solve MITM? You type your hardware token in and then an attacker uses it to send money out of your account.

>What exactly is the concern here?

Stealer malware. Or even RATs where attackers get notified when you open a sensitive app and they can take over after you have authenticated.

Could you please spell out the specifics of this scenario?

MitM via an evil (ie incorrect) domain name is prevented because U2F (and now webauthn or CTAP2) are origin bound.

RATs? On stock android? How does that work? And how are the things you describe not also threats for online banking via a browser? It's certainly not how the vast majority of attacks take place in the wild. Can you provide any examples of such an attack (ie malware as opposed to phishing) that was widespread? Otherwise I assume we're writing a script for Hollywood here.

Even then, a RAT could be trivially defeated by requiring a second one-off token authentication for any transaction that would move money around. I doubt there'd be much objection to such a policy. If people really hate it let them opt out below an amount of their choosing by signing a liability waiver.

>are origin bound.

This is assuming the user's device is not compromised.

>How does that work?

Priviledge escalation on an old OS version allows an attacker to get root access. Then with that they can bypass any sandboxing. Or they could get access to some android permission intended for system apps that they should not have access to and use that to do malicous things.

I don't closely follow malware outbreaks for android so I can't point to specific examples, but malware does exist.

So the attacker compromises the user's device ... and then sets up a MitM? This is making about as much sense as the typical Hollywood plot that involves computers so I guess that means we're on track.

> Priviledge escalation on an old OS version allows an attacker to get root access.

At which point hardware attestation accomplishes nothing. Running in an enclave might but attesting the OS image that was used to boot most certainly won't.

Many consumers use older devices. Any banking app is forced to support them or they will lose customers. There's no way around that. (It doesn't matter anyway because these sorts of attacks simply aren't commonplace.)

> but malware does exist.

I didn't ask for an example of malware. I asked you to point to an example of a widespread attack against secured accounts using malware as a vector. You have invented some utterly unrealistic scenario that simply isn't a concern in the real world for a consumer banking interaction.

You're describing the sort of high effort targeted attack utilizing one or more zero days that a high level government official might be subject to.

>At which point hardware attestation accomplishes nothing

Attestation could be used to say that the user is not using a secure version of the OS That has known vulnerabilities patched.

>Any banking app is forced to support them or they will lose customers.

Remote attestation is just one of the many signals used for detecting fraud.

>one or more zero days

Many phones are not on an OS getting security updates. Whether that be due to age or the vendor not distributing the security patches. Even using old exploits malware can work.

> with little issue

Citation needed. The fact that the infosec industry just keeps growing YoY kinda suggests that there are in fact issues that are more expensive than paying the security companies.

Yeah, to some extent I just wanted to think about where the boundary ought to be. I somewhat suspect the bank or Netflix won’t be willing to send me a device of theirs to act as their representative in my pocket. But it is basically the only time a reasonable person should consider using such a device. Anybody paying to buy Netflix or the bank a device is basically being scammed or ripped off.

I was hoping banks would turn to using Yubikeys/U2F for authentication/transaction signing, and not these Draconian measures.

I remember my parents doing online banking authenticating with smart cards. Over 20 years ago. Today the same bank requires an iOS or Play Integrity device (for individuals at least. Their gated business banking are separate services and idk what they offer there).

This is not a question of missing tech.

> I suggested this as a possible solution in another HN thread a while back, but along the lines of "If a bank wants me to have a secure, locked down terminal to do business with them, then they should be the ones forking it over, not commanding control of my owned personal device."

Most banks already do that. The secure, locked down terminals are called ATMs and they are generally placed at assorted convenient locations in most cities.

The bank thing is a smoke screen.

This entire shit storm is 100% driven by the music, film, and tv industries, who are desperate to eke a few more millions in profit from the latest Marvel snoozefest (or whatever), and who tried to argue with a straight face that they were owed more than triple the entire global GDP [0].

These people are the enemy. They do not care about about computing freedom. They don't care about you or I at all. They only care about increasing profits via and they're using the threat of locking people out of Netflix via HDCP and TPM, in order to force remote attestation on everyone.

I don't know what the average age on HN is, but I came up in the 90s when "fuck corporations" and "information wants to be free" still formed a large part of the zeitgeist, and it's absolutely infuriating to see people like TFfounders actively building things that will measurably make things worse for everyone except the C-suite class. So much for "hacker spirit".

[0] https://globalnews.ca/news/11026906/music-industry-limewire-...

HN is for the kind of hacker who makes the next Uber or AirBNB. It's strongly aligned with the interests of corporate shareholders.

Also worth remembering that around 2010, the music and film industry associations of America were claiming entitlement to $50 billion dollars annually in piracy-related losses beyond what could be accounted for in direct lost revenue (which _might_ have been as much as 10 billion, or 1/6th of their claim):

https://youtu.be/GZadCj8O1-0

These guys pathologically have had a chip on their shoulder since Napster.

> if the bank or Netflix want to send me a locked down terminal to act as a portal to their services, I guess I would be fine with using it to access (just) their services

They would only do it to assert more control over you and in Netflix's case, force more ads on you.

It is why I never use any company's apps.

If they make it a requirement, I will just close my account.

> [T]he war on general computing and computer ownership [...] It is exhausting to see the hatred some have for people just owning their hardware.

The integrity of a system being verified/verifiable doesn't imply that the owner of the system doesn't get to control it.

This sort of e2e attestation seems really useful for enterprise or public infrastructure. Like, it'd be great to know that the ATMs or transit systems in my city had this level of system integrity.

You argument correctly points out that attestation tech can be used to restrict software freedom, but it also assumes that this company is actively pursuing those use cases. I don't think that is a given.

At the end of the day, as long as the owner of the hardware gets to control the keys, this seems like fantastic tech.

> You argument correctly points out that attestation tech can be used to restrict software freedom, but it also assumes that this company is actively pursuing those use cases. I don't think that is a given.

Once it's out there and normalized, the individual engineers don't get to control how it is used. They never do.

Unless Lennart Pottering uses remote attestation to verify who is attesting to whom.

> At the end of the day, as long as the owner of the hardware gets to control the keys, this seems like fantastic tech.

The problem is that there are powerful corporate and government interests who would love nothing more than to prevent users from controlling the keys for their own computers, and they can make their dream come true simply by passing a law.

It may be the case that certain users want to ensure that their computers are only running their code. But the same technologies can also used to ensure that their computers are only running someone else's code, locking users out from their own devices.

That's like saying we shouldn't build anything that can be used for good if it can also be used for evil.

By that logic, we should just turn off the internet. Too much potential for evil there.

More seriously, the argument being presented seems to just be "attestation tech has been used for evil in the past, therefore all attestation tech is bad," which is obviously an unsound argument. A sound argument would have to show that attestation tech is _inherently_ bad, and I've already provided examples that I think effectively counter that. I can provide more if needed.

I get that we want to prevent attestation tech from being used for evil, but that's a regulatory problem, not a technical one. You make this point by framing the evil parties as "corporate and government interests."

Don't get me wrong, I am fully against anything that limits the freedoms of the person that owns the device. I just don't see how any of this is a valid argument that Amutable's mission is bad/immoral/invalid.

Or maybe another argument that's perhaps more aligned with the FOSS ideology: if I want e2e attestation of the software stack on my own devices, isn't this a good thing for me?

>if I want e2e attestation of the software stack on my own devices, isn't this a good thing for me?

The building blocks are already there for a sufficiently motivated user to build their own verified OS image. Google has been doing that with ChromeOS for years. The danger I see is that once there is a low-friction, turnkey solution for locking down general purpose systems, then the battle for control over users' devices reduces to control over the keys. That is much easier for well-heeled interests to dominate than outlawing Linux outright.

The status quo is a large population of unverified but fully user-configurable systems. While the ideal end state is a large population of verified and fully user-configurable systems, it is more likely that the tools for achieving that outcome will be co-opted by corporate and political interests to bend the population toward verified and un-configurable systems. IMO that outcome would be far worse than the status quo.

Attestation tech is much more useful for evil than for good.

You want PCIe-6? Cool well that only runs on Asus G-series with AI, and is locked to attested devices because the performance is so high that bad code can literally destroy it. So for safety, we only run trusted drivers and because they must be signed, you have to use Redhat Premium at a monthly cost of $129. But you get automatic updates.

Do you want the control systems of the subway to get modified by a malicious actor? What about damn releases? Heat pumps in apartment buildings? Robotaxis? Payroll systems? Banks?

Amutability is a huge security feature, with tons of real world applications for good.

The fact that mega corps can abuse consumers is a separate issue. We should solve that with regulation. Don't forsake all the good that this tech can do just because Asus or Google want to infringe on your software freedoms. Frankly, these mega corps are going to infringe on your rights regardlessly, whether or not Amutable exists as a business.

Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

It seems like we're doing pretty well without the baby. You sell it, you say we need it. Highly credible

System integrity also ends at the border of the system. The entire ecosystem of ATM skimmers demonstrates this-- the software and hardware are still 100% sanctioned, they're just hidden beneath a shim in the card slot and a stick-on keypad module.

I generally agree with the concept of "if you want me to use a pre-approved terminal, you supply it." I'd think this opens up a world of better possibilities. Right now, the app-centric bank/media company/whatever has to build apps that are compatible with 82 bazillion different devices, and then deal with the attestation tech support issues. Conversely, if they provide a custom terminal, it might only need to deal with a handful of devices, and they could design it to function optimally for the single use case.

My tinfoil hat theory is devices like HDDs will be locked and only work on "attested" systems that actively monitor the files. This will be pushed by the media industry to combat piracy. Then opened up for para-law enforcement like palantir.

Then gpu and cpu makers will hop on and lock their devices to promote paid Linux like redhat. Or offering "premium support" to unlock your gpu for Linux for a monthly fee.

They'll say "if you are a Linux enthusiast then go tinker with arm and risc on an SD card"

Yup

Poettering is a well-known Linux saboteur, along with Red Hat.Without RH pushing his trash, he is not really that big of a threat.

Just like de Icaza, another saboteur, ran off to MS. That is the tell-tell sign for people not convinced that either person's work in FOSS existed to cause damage.

No, this is not a snarky, sarcastic comment. Trust Amutable at your own peril.