1. Devices should be allowed to display a different logo at boot time depending on whether the software is manufacturer-approved or not. That way, if somebody sells you an used device with a flashed firmware that steals all your financial data, you have a way to know.
2. Going from approved to unapproved firmware should result in a full device wipe, Chromebook style. Possibly with a three-day cooldown. Those aren't too much of an obstacle for a true tinkerer who knows what they're doing, but they make it harder to social engineer people into installing a firmware of the attackers' choosing.
3. Users should have the ability to opt themselves into cryptographic protection, either on the original or modified firmware, for anti-theft reasons. Otherwise, devices become extremely attractive to steal.
Not sure how to phase this legally, but please also add a provision against manufacturers making the "custom firmware" logo hideously ugly on purpose to discourage rooting - like e.g.Microsoft did for Surface tablets.
> 3. Users should have the ability to opt themselves into cryptographic protection, either on the original or modified firmware, for anti-theft reasons.
Full agreement here. I very much would like to keep the bootloader locked - just to my own keys, not the OEMs.
I think it's a difference in mindset whether you view custom firmware as a grudging exception for techies (with the understanding that "normal" people should have a device under full control of their respective vendor), or whether you want an open OS ecosystem for everyone.
Another thought on that point: Why of all things is manufacturer approval so important? We know manufacturers often don't work for - or even work against - the interests of their end users. Manufacturer approval is not an indicator for security - as evidenced by the OP article.
If anything, we need independent third parties that can vet manufacturer and third party software and can attach their own cryptographic signatures as approval.
I should note Google has such an attestation scheme, and there are reliable defeats for it in most situations given root access. Apps have been able to insist on hardware-backed attestation which has not been defeated for some time, but that isn't available for old devices. Almost none do so.
If this had a meaningful impact on fraud, more apps would insist on the hardware-backed option, but that's quite rare. Even Google doesn't; I used Google Pay contactless with LineageOS and root this week. I'm currently convinced it's primarily a corporate power grab; non-Google-approved Android won't be a consumer success if it doesn't run your banking app, and the copyright lobby loves anything that helps DRM.
You could also imagine having them integrated directly into the phone, but with a physically separated button or fingerprint reader to authenticate. The TAN generator could even have the ability to override the display to replicate the UX of authenticator apps.
The web app has been running with this security model for decades on PCs, and it has been fine. The whole narrative about remote attestation being necessary to protect users is an evil lie in my opinion, but it is an effective lie which has convinced even knowledgeable IT professionals that taking away device ownership from users is somehow justified.
The bank’s bad processes are not an end device fault.
I'm alright with limiting liability for an unlocked/customized phone (for things that happen from that phone) - but that's a legal/contractual thing. For that to work, it's enough for a judge to understand that the phone was customized at that time - it doesn't require the app to know.
Won't this also forbid virus scanners that quarantine files?
> This pertains to all programmable components on the device, including low-level hardware controllers.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect any manufacturer to uphold a warranty if making unlimited changes to the system is permitted.
There might be a couple messy edge cases if applied at the software level but I think it would work well.
Applied at the hardware level it would be very clear cut. It would simply outlaw technical measures taken to prevent the user from installing an arbitrary OS on the device.
Regarding warranties, what's so difficult about flashing a stock image to a device being serviced? At least in the US wasn't this already settled long ago by Magnuson-Moss? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty...
Yes, I think that would cover most cases if we take it to its logical conclusion of wiping all device state (hard disk). OTOH, a few points:
1. I would accept the need to wipe the hard disk if I had messed with firmware or the OS, but not if a couple of keys on the keyboard had stopped working. This implies that (for me at least) a meaningful distinction remains between these two "levels" of warranty service. Do you agree?
2. Activities like overclocking or overvolting a CPU have the potential to cause lasting damage that can't be reversed by re-flashing. Under the policy you're suggesting, it would be illegal for manufacturers to offer users the option "You can pull this pin low to overclock outside the supported range, but you will void the warranty by doing so", and too expensive for them to endlessly replace parts damaged by these activities for free under warranty, so that consumer option, rare as it already is, would go away completely.
3. I still think there may be some devices that are impractical to completely re-flash. According to this 2021 Porsche article [0], modern cars contain 70-100 ECUs (microcontrollers), each of which will have its own flash/EEPROM.
[0]: https://medium.com/next-level-german-engineering/porsche-fut...
1. I expect wiping any given component to be entirely up to the manufacturer's discretion. If doing so is not trivial and is legitimately required for the repair to proceed then I'd expect the user to be charged for the additional service.
2. Violating manufacturer specifications and being at fault for damages are sometimes distinct. A manufacturer arbitrarily saying "you must not do X" should not necessarily mean that doing X will void the warranty. It might though. Discretion is obviously required.
3. If your car stops working after you mess with the firmware and you take it in to the dealer I imagine they'd charge you to reflash things since the issue was caused by your own actions. That doesn't mean they should be able to decline to cover entirely unrelated defects.
Also I don't think vehicle firmware would be caught up by the original proposal in the first place since cars aren't generally intended to run third party software. There's a grey area with infotainment systems that have an app store depending on if those are viewed as standalone or part of the larger vehicle. However reframing the proposal to revolve around intent would likely leave the firmware on unrelated embedded components in the clear to be locked down so long as those components don't interfere with the ability to freely use the general purpose computing element.
Personally I'd like vehicle firmware to be covered by similar protections but I recognize that falls outside the scope of a proposal about products intended for use as general purpose computing devices.
I don't like the "intended for general purpose computing" concept so much. For one, it seems to offer lots of easy wiggle room to manufacturers: Just say that your product is not intended for that, but for something marginally more specific. For another, it's not clear to me why general purpose computing ought to enjoy consumer protections that other manufactured devices do not. (One exception I'd grant is for safety reasons: If tinkering with a device could make it cause injury, fine, that device can be in a different class.)
Yes. If I really _want_ to execute malware on my device, I should be allowed to do so by disabling the antivirus or disregarding a warning.
> I don't think it's reasonable to expect any manufacturer to uphold a warranty if making unlimited changes to the system is permitted
It is very reasonable and already the rule of law in "sane" jurisdictions, that manufacturer and mandated warranties are not touched by unrelated, reversable modifications to both hard- and software.
I agree.
> already the rule of law in "sane" jurisdictions, that manufacturer and mandated warranties are not touched by unrelated, reversable modifications to both hard- and software.
Do you have any examples of such jurisdictions? I think whether this is reasonable turns on how "reversible" is interpreted. If it means "reversible to factory settings", including wiping all built-in storage media, then it seems reasonable to me that manufacturers should support this (possibly modulo some extreme cases like cars that have dozens of CPUs). But I would not be happy with having my hard disk wiped if I sent in my laptop for repairs because a couple of keys stopped working, which tells me that (to me) there remain at least two classes of "problem that should be fixed for free under warranty by the manufacturer".
Words written on toilet paper. Only thing that exists today are “billionaire rights”.
But even the DRM that is already there often only uses copyright laws as suggestions. E.g. YouTube's takedown guidelines are defined through their TOS, not through the DMCA.
Watching copyrighted stuff on general purpose computers is a very new phenomena, and it's still quite atypical IMO.
These restrictions extend outside the particular device. It must also be illegal as a commercial entity to enforce security schemes which involve remote attestation of the software stack on the client device such that service providers can refuse to service clients based on failing attestation. Service providers have other means of protecting themselves, taking away users control of their own devices is a heavy handed and unnecessarily draconian approach which ultimately only benefits the ad company that happens to make the software stack since they also benefit from restricting what software users can run. Hypothetically, they might be interested in making it impossible to modify video players to skip ads.