[chiglug] Thoughts on Android variants? (In particular, Copperhead OS?)

Jim Campbell jcampbell at gnome.org
Mon Nov 7 21:24:25 UTC 2016


Dan, I've been using the full Android OS + Google Services that ships with
the Nexus 5x. I actually asked Matthew Garrett about his blog post which
referenced signing whatever ROM he was installing (
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/31765.html ) when he gave a talk here about a
week ago. He said that he's not following that procedure now because of the
pace of updates, and that (from what I can recall) he's using the regular
Android version that came with his Nexus device. He mentioned wanting to
revisit the blog post, though.

One of the points Matthew made was that attackers will now download
software updates, reverse engineer them to see what has changed, and then
use that knowledge to craft attacks against unpatched software. So updating
your computer / phone OS is even more important than ever these days.

It also makes me sad about all of the Android devices out there that are
now basically insecure, and will never have any hope of being secure. If
even your best device (i.e., Nexus / Pixel) can go unpatched against a
well-known vulnerability (Dirty Cow) for about a month, that's not good. I
thought this article does a good job in explaining many of the background
issues around Copperhead and Android:
http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/copperhead-os-fix-android-security/

I'm personally not sure what I'll do with my phone. For right now and for
the foreseeable future, though, it looks like both iPhone and Windows Phone
have Android beat on security in the non-hackerdom, regular person /
regular user circles, though.

Jim


On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 9:31 AM Dan Krol <orblivion at gmail.com> wrote:

> Oh and I forgot my favorite part of OSMAnd - I can download an entire
> region of *wikipedia articles*. Again the interface for getting to them
> sucks, but it's cool to have that all offline, especially traveling around.
>
> On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 7:30 AM, Dan Krol <orblivion at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> OSMand, because it's available on F-Droid. At least I used to use it for
> navigation; the interface isn't great. But I still use it to walk around,
> and it's really nice to be able to download an entire region.
>
> I heard maps.me had a really good interface (it's commercial) and that
> it's (pretty much?) FOSS, and also uses OSM, but it didn't qualify for
> F-Droid yet. I think because of a dispute about using their servers (much
> like Signal). https://f-droid.org/forums/topic/maps-me/
>
> On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 7:23 AM, sten <me at sud0.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 7, 2016, 09:15 Dan Krol <orblivion at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Considering it. I'm just scoping things out for my next phone. I would
> need expensive new hardware to use Copperhead. It'd be nice to find
> something new and reliable with actual updates that works on my HTC One.
>
>
> Just on this last point, Copperhead is currently available for the Nexus
> 9, 5X and 6P. There's no download for the Pixel on their download page.
> While more expensive than not buying a new phone, you can find the 5X
> between $200-300 these days.
>
> I'm looking at Copperhead, but I get my work email and calendar from GMail
> (grr) so I need to stick with Google services for now.
>
> <thread hijack>What are folks using for navigation these days when not
> using Google services?</thread hijack>
>
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chicagolug.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20161107/7fd6a0e3/attachment-0002.html>


More information about the discuss mailing list