SafetyNet was a mistake in general. But banks specifically are among the most obnoxious shitters when it comes to "you aren't allowed to do things except the way we want it".
Over and over again you have to contend with bullshit like 120MB APKs full of obfuscated code, root detection, custom firmware detection, "non-mainstream device" detection, VPN detection, and even more obscure spyware-flavored functionality.
By now, if a major regulator like EU steps in, cracks the whip, and forces banks to provide access through a common API standard to any third party banking app? I'd welcome the change.
> By now, if a major regulator like EU steps in, cracks the whip, and forces banks to provide access through a common API standard to any third party banking app? I'd welcome the change.
"Open banking" is kind of a thing with PSD2/PSD3, but in name only. In reality, it's impossible to build anything useful. Interacting with any of the "open" APIs requires approval from a national bank (or similar institution), which means there are many hoops to jump through.
There is only one bank I know of that offers an API for end users ("bunq" IIRC). Every other god damned bank insists on being user hostile.
More it was the banks were made liable for stolen funds. So they responded by making funds harder to steal.
Do you really think banks care about you installing custom themes or whatever? They only care because the cracked Spotify app also has malware bundled on the side which uses the new root access to break the app sandboxes.
I also consider restrictions against open source
to be malicious acts - hence also malware, such
as by banks and other companies. Or, worse,
government agencies. In a local medical university
in central Europe, for instance, we are required
to either have a Google account or a Microsoft
account - usually the latter, to access emails.
I don't know if there is a common API standard from a technical point of view, but there is the legal framework for it. Banks in the the EU have to provide an access to third parties who provide account information services to clients (themselves being regulated and supervised by a national agency). I would assume because it is mandatory, it is in the interest of banks to share costs and provide a single unified technical API, since they all have to spend the money anyway.
> banks specifically are among the most obnoxious shitters when it comes to "you aren't allowed to do things except the way we want it"
Since this post is about a Dutch bank, I think it's important to add some nuance to this. In the Netherlands, banks have pretty much been made responsible for any money a client loses that a bank could have theoretically prevented. This includes people wiring their life savings to someone who pretended to be a bank employee or police officer. This has become a massive cost to banks over here and they're trying to do anything to prevent this.
Right now, I need to wait 4 hours before I can increase the maximum amount I can transfer through internet banking. Want to buy something expensive and you forgot to do this? Too bad, try again in 4 hours.
> forces banks to provide access through a common API standard
I think this is good actually. We have taken the convenience vs security trade off too much towards the former either because or due to how busy and intense life is nowadays. Waiting 4hr to make a big purchase should almost never be a problem.
Open banking isn’t mandatory. Psd2 and successors are. But it does not require the banks to expose feature parity APIs so others can replicate their apps.
AFAICT, psd2 should be sufficient to do the most elemental of banking features. See transactions and initiate them.
One of my agents has (read only) access to my accounts. I do it via Era, which is quite good, though expensive (they try to justify this with other functionality, but they provide nothing my agent can't do itself other than the API access).
To provide me with API access to my own accounts, Era goes through another third party provider which again connects to my bank. I guess they could eventually get direct connections themselves.
So instead of me get convenient read-only access to my bank, I've ended up giving two separate third party providers credentials I'd prefer they didn't have.
All I'd need was an automated way to get a CSV or JSON dump of my transactions and I'd have been happy, but none of my banks support that without manually logging in. It's infuriating.
Exactly, it's an utterly ludicrous state of affairs that I'd have to give access to a third party to my freaking bank details. And this is treated as some kind of success?
I'd really love to see your banking app that works differently and cannot super trivially be attacked by malicious software. Can you show us your example of such an app? It might be helpful to show tha validity of your arguments.
People need to stop calling for the EU "to step in", they already have and made everything worse. They forced PSD2 with """"""""""""""Open Banking""""""""""""""" which requires convoluted requirements and is regulated to death so no private person can call the API themselves and get e.g. their balance or transactions.
I like complaining about it too, but it's still a massive step forward from how things were before, where I had no access. Now I at least have access even if it involves going via third parties.
Not sure what you mean. This should be the default for most things. Giving corps levers to abuse the users/consumers is going to result in exactly that.
As Dunning said and Marx quoted:
> "With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent., positive audacity; 100 per cent. will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged."
SafetyNet indeed was and it was not a mistake. Mistakes are bugs, a company doing things they didn't want to do, or didn't intend to have the effect it later had.
Banks on the other hand, as much as hateable (most of them are), also just shit bricks at mere thought of one regulatory spanking, not only hammering from their boards and shareholders (esp. the major ones). So – it might be a great idea to not shit on banks shitting on such choices.
Banks are also sacred of making changes and going farther from the "mainstream" and another reason is also because - they handle "real money", often people's entire life-savings.
We just think:
… oh, this OS is soo cool, so safe, let's use this.
… And then notice: goodness, this motherfucking company is not letting me use their app on this coolest and safest shit out there. Burn them!
And banks think:
… shit this one is not part of any common industry standards, let's stay the fuck away from it.
… Further: ha, authorities don't look kindly on this OS, let's stay extra away from it.
… And more: will this mean we have to support one more standard, one more release channel, one more modified OS? Anyone who mentions name of this OS again will thrown out of the window of highest floor of our HQ (and mind it, we are on 33rd already).
Solution (one of the) is forcing Googles and Apples to stay open, to stay respectful of user privacy in an absolute and transparent manner, to not let them implement closed-off protocols, to have APIs that is not availalbe to everyone – in a safe manner, not let them (and the politicians and security agencies) fear-monger the public like "think of the children" etc. Blaming banks is literally barking up the wrong tree – esp. in this context.
Another way is: not buying these devices and suffer the pain (and experience the bliss, yes!) and then hope/work for this number to increase and collectively point a thick and long shimmering hot rod (metamorphically speaking) at the hinds of such companies (hell, include the banks as well – so that they won't fuck up their desktop and mobile portals) so that they collectively feel the heat and are forced to bend (no metaphors here!). But no, we won't let go of our annual pleasure of this practically bullshit <First Time on an X>™ orgasms.
tl;dr: SafetyNet was not a mistake, making something like SafetyNet into the monster it and then making it limited to one company/one publisher (esp. since they are the ones who also control the OS) was the mistake. I think of this to be solveable sometnhing on the lines of multiple certificate issuers (but we have to be careful of eMudhras) - both for safetynets, and app stores (if not combined).
> Over and over again you have to contend with bullshit like 120MB APKs full of obfuscated code, root detection, custom firmware detection, "non-mainstream device" detection, VPN detection, and even more obscure spyware-flavored functionality.
I keep seeing people say this, and it keeps being true that you can just go to your bank's website and do whatever it is you want to do.
Well that's not really true. There's most definitely functionality that is only available in the app. If I want to make a payment without having to dig a card reader out every single time, I absolutely have to use my bank's app.
My (Dutch) bank Rabobank also blocks GrapheneOS [0], I contacted them about it, you get the usual thing, that "security is very important to them". Arguing is completely pointless, they don't understand what they are talking about. The Rabobank app works fine on Android phones that haven't seen updates in years...
However, via Aurora store it works fine (inc Wero)... I do feel a bit uncomfortable about it, but it's a one-to-one connection to the Play Store, so should be fine... What I don't understand is how that can work, the app itself does no checking after it is installed I guess?
My other bank, bunq, keeps whining about some service but functions normally nevertheless (I should give Play services access to my "Phone", I don't understand what that entails so I refuse it). N26 and Trade Republic just work.
I don't get wireless payments via Google Pay, but I don't even want that. So I'm really looking forward to Walt [1]. I would even start my sub now if that'd help him get it available in a year... At the moment there is Curve Pay [2], they have their own NFC stack. Bunq also used to have that (back when they were very pro-privacy) but they ditched it in favor of that horrible Google Pay.
> The Rabobank app works fine on Android phones that haven't seen updates in years...
Exactly. If these companies were so serious about security, they should also block devices with, let's say, >1 year of security updates backlog. But that's a completely different number of customers compared to negligible Graphene/Lineage/e userbases.
They do not block unupdated phones because that will force users to buy exceptionally expensive devices to keep updated. Another thing is actually supportability. Just like any enterprise software, it targets a set of common devices so they can provide support and QA on it.
Now, that isn't to say there aren't security issues, nor that QA is perfect on devices they do support (like with any enterprise software projects), but it is a valid reason from a business perspective to not support everything.
Why do you think generally OpenBSD and such platforms aren't supported by commercial software, nor most open-source software? It adds a lot of burden for testing and QA on developers who will need to become intricately familiar with yet another platform.
People stare blindly at some customer support answers and hinge everything on those words, but if you think carefully about how software, compatibility and support work, this all makes perfect sense.
For Google control is the issue (and the data flowing with it), not security, and once again we in Europe just swallow that shit and mess up our supposed "open" standards. In this case it really is because there are no competent people making these decisions. They just trust Google when they say: "It's for security".
I think what we need to do is all complain in the same way, something akin to: GrapheneOS is the most secure Android option, it's just not catering to Google by sharing all user data with them. You are falling for the false argument from Google that this is about security. It's not, it's more about sovereignty and control. And you and your bank are catering to Google/the US and YOU are throwing YOUR privacy conscious users under the bus, because you do not fully understand the forces at play.
> It's not, it's more about sovereignty and control
The bank doesn't care about either. It cares about the risks, costs and opinion of the regulator on how well it evaluates and controls those risks.
If risks can be transferred to an external party and DNB signs on it, sure. If DNB says reliance on this specific external party is a risk in itself, then sure, there will be a plan for that too. The plan could be "if google becomes a problem we can publish a new version of the app using grapheneos attestation anchors in N weeks"
Of course they pass system integrity. The whole point of the thing is not "it should be secure", it's "the user has not messed with it so we control it".
Well, yes? The law says that the bank should do the thing and the bank does the thing to the best of it's ability, given what people usually work there.
Oh, you have no idea. It's not even about costs. In a 200 year old company the level of corporate disfunction and the average skill level of people is something else entirely. Nothing ever happens unless the regulator holds a blowtorch wired to a timer to the CEO's ass.
In Holland, GrapheneOS users are being targeted by police after "busting" a re-seller. The owners of the phones got raided without them being involved in any investigation. Just having the phone was enough to get a knock.
Supposedly the Dutch police had "cracked" their phones.
According to our information, the reseller did not distribute official GrapheneOS. Using AI tools, he had built his own fork and added mobile device management (MDM) for remote administration. The result was a separate operating system that lacked, among other things, the security updates of the original project.
His signing keys for that system were probably compromised. Anyone holding those keys can build an update that the phones accept as genuine. Such an update was apparently installed on seized phones via ADB (Android Debug Bridge), an interface that requires a USB cable connection, and probably removed the screen lock. The phones could then be examined forensically. On our information, the authorities again needed the phone in their hands. On official GrapheneOS, the same approach would require the project's own signing keys.
This is the issue with being lenient on crime but also being liberal. You have to search for the "right" patterns to find your criminal. It happens that folks who care about privacy, and criminals, two distinct groups search and use the same set of technologies: wether it's grapheneOS, or others. I am also tired of people still looking suspicious at me for not having instagram, snap or tiktok or use whatsapp, it's like I dropped out of society, and that I use linux and use open source email clients/server, I use ublock origin advanced with blocking of scripts and 3rd party domains. Why privacy is an uphill daily battle.
> I am also tired of people still looking suspicious at me for not having instagram, snap or tiktok or use whatsapp, it's like I dropped out of society,
social media was designed to appear like it is society, endorsed by the same people who _made_ your society
i think its all just an illusion to make you work harder :(
> Police were looking for […] Google Pixel phones. These have become popular among criminals in recent years […]. Among others, the murderers of Dutch crime reporter Peter R. de Vries had Google Pixel devices with them during the attack.
This is so braindead, it’s the same as “a black person committed a crime, lets search all black people!”
If someone with an iPhone commits a crime, will they do the same?
Peter R De Vries was a prolific crime reporter / journalist who did exceptional work in the Netherlands for many years until he was murdered in cold blood.
I really hope this doesn't mean other Dutch banks will follow suit. It's already quite impossible to actually contact someone at the bank who can understand the issue if it's on the technical side. I have no idea how I would even start to broach this topic with ABN Amro.
I thought that one of the goals of Wero was to become less dependent on US technology (Paypal). By requiring you to use either Android or iOS it seems to me as if that is more of a marketing ploy than anything else. As multiple other banks that support Wero however run on non-Google Android I think it is more likely that whoever wrote that message just doesn't know what they are talking about.
There will be no independence of US tech as long as everyone in europe has google or apple in their pocket and most administrations have windows on their PC. But, at least in germany, ruling parties are very slow to notice this.
My mortgage was with a bank that had a website but no app and I was happy, and then they merged with another bank and only had an app and no website and I was not at all happy (but the bank they merged with also had their own mortgage product with both app and website and I do not know why they didn't migrate to using that platform). I swiftly moved to a bank that incidentally had a lower interest and both a competent app and website, and I noted to the previous merged bank that the reason I was leaving is that they did not accommodate me. Whether that feedback was heard, I'm unsure.
Not an option if all banks follow suit. If this trend continues you would only switch to a bank who hasn't yet locked down their app yet.
Hopping banks is easy for just savings, but a lot of work and inconvenience for your standard payment accounts, and that's ignoring additional services like mortgages and insurance.
Indeed. It also fights symptoms rather than the underlying issue - that Google Play Integrity is an anti-competitive method that Google uses to shut out competition. The fact that Google-certified phones that are months behind on critical security updates (or even have malware in there updates as a recent case) do get a pass, shows that it is not really about security, but about destroying competition in the smartphone ecosystem as early as possible.
The solution is not voting with your wallet, but either leveraging the DMA or drafting new laws that counter this.
Either Google should be forced to approve secure alternatives like GrapheneOS or companies should be required to also implement AOSP attestation. Or alternatively, remote attestation should be banned completely, but I can understand the argument that it serves some legitimate uses.
I love how people think "vote with your wallet" is an option on most "vote with your wallet" issues. If people could vote with their wallets they wouldn't have to, would they?
Vote with your vote for politicians for common sense regulations that favor the consumer at the expense of everything else.
This is how it should work, but not how it does. Dutch banks don't pass down increases in interest rates simply because the risk of losing customers is so low [1]. Dutch consumers don't want, can't be bothered, or have such loyalty to their bank of choice, that even a criminally-low rate won't convince them to switch bank
Dutch consumers don't want, can't be bothered, or have such loyalty to their bank of choice, that even a criminally-low rate won't convince them to switch bank
It is also just very hard in practice. A lot of people have their mortgages, savings that are locked for years, etc. at a bank. Also, switching a bank also impacts other family members if you have shared accounts, etc.
In this particular case it's also not fully clear yet whether Wero is starting to enforce this. If that happens to be the case, it's only a matter of time before other banks also start requiring Play Integrity for Wero transactions.
It's not hard to just move your savings. A lot of people do that actually; just keep the standard banking account for daily payments and all other services, and put savings in bank-managed ETFs, time deposits, or savings accounts with other banks (I do all three).
If Wero becomes the pan-european solution for online payments it is slated to become, then no European bank will be exempt from this. Given that as a European your government covers up to €100,000 placed at any European bank in case that bank goes tits-up, you are likely to end with a European bank in any case.
Some more details: various people contacted ASN, but they are mostly pointing to Wero. The Play Integrity check is performed in the method nl.devolksbank.mobile.banking.security.data.wero.IntegrityRepository#requestIntegrityToken. From the name, this seems to be ASN's own code and not an SDK from Wero. Someone also found that the integrity token gets sent to ASN's own servers: https://m.devolksbank.nl/bspc-payment-consent-administration... (De Volksbank is the owner of ASN).
If this comes from Wero as they claim, I guess we Europeans in countries that are covered by Wero are in for a bad time. That said, some Dutch banks also made the migration from iDEAL to Wero and don't require Play Integrity.
If this comes from Wero as they claim, I guess we Europeans in countries that are covered by Wero are in for a bad time. That said, some Dutch banks also made the migration from iDEAL to Wero and don't require Play Integrity.
That's their "Phase 1". They are currently building new infra. My ASN bank app just yesterday actually wanted me to go through some reauthentication flow for migrating to Wero so maybe they are actually moving to that now.
This will keep happening so long as GrapheneOS is a "niche" operating system. We need to build up economic leverage by increasing GrapheneOS usage numbers until they can no longer afford to block it.
My bank app works on GrapheneOS but checks play integrity and disables biometrics and lowers limits.
Thankfully I'm not forced to use it since I can log into the bank and authorize transactions with the government digital signature app, which uses hardware attestation and considers GOS fully secure.
Funnily enough, the bank's app crashes on launch with memory tagging enabled which means they have memory bugs.
I have a Pixel 6 with eOS and am happy that my banking app works on here. If it were to suddenly stop working, I would be kind of screwed though.
Similar thing happened with my Health Insurance. Germany is pushing towards getting rid of health insurance cards in favor of a digital identity. To manage this, use the NFC functionality at the doctor, and log into the insurance app or website for fetching messages, documents or other information, you will in the future have to authenticate yourself using a new authenticator app. Now the problem is, that the app from my insurer does not work! Surely because of some "non-standard Android" b****. Contacting their support is obviously useless, as they have no tech knowledge and assume that I have even less, therefore just regurgitate the same "how to install the app" steps from the Q&A. All I have left is to switch to a different insurance, who's ID app works on my phone.
While this is all very annoying, I do see the point that especially banking and insurance has to be very secure. And they aim to achieve this by obfuscation. Against this one might argue that open code is more secure, as everyone can check it. But this goes both ways, for good and bad intentions. And are there not much more resources and energy behind the bad than the good intentions?
Just a heads-up from a fellow Pixel 6 owner: it has reached end-of-life last month, because the five years since the launch in October 2021 are up. Better start looking for a replacement soon.
ASN was pretty bad - they recently wanted me to renew KYC/ID info. They wanted to install a Chrome Plugin that then would read the government KYC data. I nope'd out of that very fast. The alternative indeed was an app.
I'm not in the android rooting / modding scene anymore, but isn't there just a way to install a (Magisk?) module or something to spoof the Safetynet check anymore? I'm not saying that is a great idea, just in my memory theres workaround for this kinda thing.
Dont take the fact that Wero still works for Bunq as an indicator that ASN or any other bank are doing something especially untowards.
Given Bunq's abysmal security track record it probably means they just forgot to enforce some policy that Wero requires on mobile devices - no matter how annoying these "no grapheneOS" policies are in general, of course.
I can't take bunq seriously because every time I approve a direct debit I keep seeing two transactions in the log -- one already processed and another still pending and also asking me to enter the pin again after it was approved.
So we had something good in the Netherlands with iDeal, then they had to make it EU global and they messed it up.
For starters there is going to be percentage commission on each payment instead of just a flat fee low price like iDeal has. For some reason they felt compelled to introduce buyer protection like a credit card has, instead of just making it a digital debit payment system. And now we are also forced in to the Google ecosystem.
Great. Just great.
Why do they even feel they need the Google Play integrity API anyway? If you are really so concerned about the kind of attacks that supposedly fixes, you better ban Windows, macOS and Linux desktops and notebooks from banking online. Because their security model doesn't even come close to what Android or iOS has.
iDEAL | Wero was just a rebrand of iDEAL to make people get used to the new name Wero. The actual Wero roll-out has only just started. ASN and Bunq seem to be the first Dutch banks to actually roll out Wero (and not just renaming iDEAL to iDEAL | Wero).
The reasoning goes like that. App is more secure than web because 1. you can share a password but can't share the shared secret generated when the app is bound to account (lol, yes, they believe so) and 2. It has certificate pinning so you can't be mitmed when the system trust store is manipulated
The app however is only secure as long as your system isn't rooted. To make sure it isn't rooted you need to ask somebody who signed the system image if the integrity still holds.
I heard interesting ideas about phones, such as all phones having secure enclave and hsm which the app is totally using, so you can't just lift both the encrypted secret and it's kek from the same filesystem
> To maintain that level of quality, we also need to be clear about our system requirements and avoid dedicating resources to troubleshooting issues on unsupported platforms and configurations.
This is such a corporate non-answer. If that was the problem, they could just detect the custom ROM and when someone calls support, the support agent could just say sorry not supported and hang up. I doubt that is the real issue.
One troubling possibility is that some security might be implemented client-side. Banks are ahead in security in some areas but far behind in others. Like in some cases you can just take money out of someones account if you know their account number, they rely on manual fraud detection, heuristics, and chargebacks. Instead of standard 2FA, my countries banks use a baroque parallel system. My password was for many years a word like "toast": It had a maximum length, had to be pronounceable over the telephone, was case insensitive etc.. Third party payment providers don't use something like OAuth but directly ask for my bank's password, and they used to just scrape the bank site, and so on.
But I think the real reason is regulatory, political, or due to pressure from the platforms. There is no pressing business or technical reason to go out of their way to block custom ROMs.
ASN has been dysfunctional for years. They needed a bailout and ever since have only deteriorated in their operations. To be fair, their risk management has surely improved and their new CEO is great. But their actual operations are superbad. They only do the easy loans and mortgages because anything else they can't do. Still I think as a bank they are doing well, everyone is opening accounts there. Marketing matters more than service I suppose.
It's a bit outdated. The big green one isn't in the government majority ownership for a year and some now, so we installed back those glass shelves and cocaine dispensers in all restrooms by now.
Yes, the state is divesting from ABN AMRO (and apparently making a profit on it) but ASN is still 100% owned. I think Rabobank was the only one of the big banks that did not need state sponsorship. Probably due to the fact they are a cooperation and don't have shareholders to please.
Also, Wero is going to be used for tap-to-pay in stores (initial roll-out planned for 2027). Carrying a second phone is going to be old pretty soon. Also, I think we should fight this on principle.
The title sets a lot of blame on the bank, but there might be other factors at play. It is possible that either national or european regulations or laws makes it mandatory for the banks to comply with a set of security features that makes it impossible for them to offer services to degoogled phones. There might not be any alternative because it would cost too much money to develop and more importantly to distribute it. It can also be the case that Google uses its influence over the android open source project to make sure it will never be the case.
If Wero (assuming it's Wero) can push banks to implement Play Integrity, they can also make some guidelines or make a small SDK to for AOSP remote attestation. It's not terribly hard to implement and some banks already do.
I don't think there is an actual written regulation that talks about attestation or SafetyNet.
I can imagine in some meeting with the ministry or an industry association that somebody in charge said "implement all safety measures that Google and Apple provide, no excuses" and they just execute it.
I could also imagine there is a real need to do so. Maybe somebody found that criminals use rooted phones to robotically launder money or something like that. Or there was a criminal case where someone got a bank account with a fake ID and used it on a burner phone. Then the developers get a discrete notice from law enforcement or regulatory bodies and are told to close that gap. Who knows?
So much for european countries wanting to become independent
of the USA.
There is no cohesive strategy. It will literally require a new
generation of younger people to replace the old lobbyists here -
and some of these younger people will become corrupt lobbyists
as well.
Open standards should become a human right. I am not kidding. I
fail to see why services in a given country, get tied down to
foreign companies and foreign countries.
Probably in-person at a branch. However they are allowed to use technology for certain tasks; their elders just have to discuss (and vote?) on it first.
Nah. Unified Attestation is an initiative by some some companies that really have terrible security (years old kernels, drivers, firmware, often way behind on Android updates). They are also known for campaigns against GrapheneOS, including astroturfing. They also do a fair amount of eurowashing (in particular Volla, who sell UAE/Chinese phones as a European phone with a markup of hundreds of Euros).
If Unified Attestation would become a standard, they would use it to entrench themselves over GrapheneOS et al.
AOSP has an API for remote attestation attestation. Banks should just come up with a list of signing keys to be trusted. Heck, they can start here:
Incidentally I was happy to see that while they're phasing out their previous cryptographic identification device (that you put your bank card in) they will still support some kind of cryptographic usb dongle (in addition to smartphones).
When I wanted to open a second account a few months back, ABN is the only bank I have not tried because, well, I have my first account with them... I could not find similar option with any other, though.
I confirm that ABN AMRO's "Unable to open an account using the app" in the Netherlands is a procedure where a guy comes to your house to check your ID. I found it a really cool thing in terms of accessibility.
Your account appears to be shadowbanned (your current comment is visible because people vouched for it). I'm letting you know since looking at your recent comments I can't see any obvious reason. You might want to use the contact link to talk to hn about it.
Not quite true. All banks really want you to use their app, and the neobanks actually demand it (and get away with it because they are not as important as the so-called system banks).
But look at the pages more carefully, and you'll note that there is a way to open an account using just a web browser too (e.g., look at abnamro.nl). The links are deemphasised by using dark UI patterns of course.
ING is being really dirty about this. It should be possible to open an account, and get the OTP hardware device that reads the chip on the debit card, but they don't document how you can open an account without the app. It's probably possible, as existing customers can bank without the app, but you will probably have to call them.
Banks would love to get rid of all those nasty people without approved smartphones, but that would cause political pushback.
Over and over again you have to contend with bullshit like 120MB APKs full of obfuscated code, root detection, custom firmware detection, "non-mainstream device" detection, VPN detection, and even more obscure spyware-flavored functionality.
By now, if a major regulator like EU steps in, cracks the whip, and forces banks to provide access through a common API standard to any third party banking app? I'd welcome the change.
Even if they did, I feel the result will be the opposite of what you expect. EU own reference implementation of eID relies upon Play Integrity [0].
[0]: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-app-andro...
"Open banking" is kind of a thing with PSD2/PSD3, but in name only. In reality, it's impossible to build anything useful. Interacting with any of the "open" APIs requires approval from a national bank (or similar institution), which means there are many hoops to jump through.
There is only one bank I know of that offers an API for end users ("bunq" IIRC). Every other god damned bank insists on being user hostile.
Do you really think banks care about you installing custom themes or whatever? They only care because the cracked Spotify app also has malware bundled on the side which uses the new root access to break the app sandboxes.
I also consider restrictions against open source to be malicious acts - hence also malware, such as by banks and other companies. Or, worse, government agencies. In a local medical university in central Europe, for instance, we are required to either have a Google account or a Microsoft account - usually the latter, to access emails.
All paid by the taxpayers ...
it would be if wasn't for the obvious reasons of those being banks
Since this post is about a Dutch bank, I think it's important to add some nuance to this. In the Netherlands, banks have pretty much been made responsible for any money a client loses that a bank could have theoretically prevented. This includes people wiring their life savings to someone who pretended to be a bank employee or police officer. This has become a massive cost to banks over here and they're trying to do anything to prevent this.
Right now, I need to wait 4 hours before I can increase the maximum amount I can transfer through internet banking. Want to buy something expensive and you forgot to do this? Too bad, try again in 4 hours.
> forces banks to provide access through a common API standard
Doesn't PSD2 already provide this?
AFAICT, psd2 should be sufficient to do the most elemental of banking features. See transactions and initiate them.
But that is quite limited.
To provide me with API access to my own accounts, Era goes through another third party provider which again connects to my bank. I guess they could eventually get direct connections themselves.
So instead of me get convenient read-only access to my bank, I've ended up giving two separate third party providers credentials I'd prefer they didn't have.
All I'd need was an automated way to get a CSV or JSON dump of my transactions and I'd have been happy, but none of my banks support that without manually logging in. It's infuriating.
Not sure what you mean. This should be the default for most things. Giving corps levers to abuse the users/consumers is going to result in exactly that.
As Dunning said and Marx quoted:
> "With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent., positive audacity; 100 per cent. will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged."
Banks on the other hand, as much as hateable (most of them are), also just shit bricks at mere thought of one regulatory spanking, not only hammering from their boards and shareholders (esp. the major ones). So – it might be a great idea to not shit on banks shitting on such choices.
Banks are also sacred of making changes and going farther from the "mainstream" and another reason is also because - they handle "real money", often people's entire life-savings.
We just think:
… oh, this OS is soo cool, so safe, let's use this.
… And then notice: goodness, this motherfucking company is not letting me use their app on this coolest and safest shit out there. Burn them!
And banks think:
… shit this one is not part of any common industry standards, let's stay the fuck away from it.
… Further: ha, authorities don't look kindly on this OS, let's stay extra away from it.
… And more: will this mean we have to support one more standard, one more release channel, one more modified OS? Anyone who mentions name of this OS again will thrown out of the window of highest floor of our HQ (and mind it, we are on 33rd already).
Solution (one of the) is forcing Googles and Apples to stay open, to stay respectful of user privacy in an absolute and transparent manner, to not let them implement closed-off protocols, to have APIs that is not availalbe to everyone – in a safe manner, not let them (and the politicians and security agencies) fear-monger the public like "think of the children" etc. Blaming banks is literally barking up the wrong tree – esp. in this context.
Another way is: not buying these devices and suffer the pain (and experience the bliss, yes!) and then hope/work for this number to increase and collectively point a thick and long shimmering hot rod (metamorphically speaking) at the hinds of such companies (hell, include the banks as well – so that they won't fuck up their desktop and mobile portals) so that they collectively feel the heat and are forced to bend (no metaphors here!). But no, we won't let go of our annual pleasure of this practically bullshit <First Time on an X>™ orgasms.
tl;dr: SafetyNet was not a mistake, making something like SafetyNet into the monster it and then making it limited to one company/one publisher (esp. since they are the ones who also control the OS) was the mistake. I think of this to be solveable sometnhing on the lines of multiple certificate issuers (but we have to be careful of eMudhras) - both for safetynets, and app stores (if not combined).
I keep seeing people say this, and it keeps being true that you can just go to your bank's website and do whatever it is you want to do.
Not all banks. Monzo doesn't have banking through the website, and I doubt they're the only ones.
However, via Aurora store it works fine (inc Wero)... I do feel a bit uncomfortable about it, but it's a one-to-one connection to the Play Store, so should be fine... What I don't understand is how that can work, the app itself does no checking after it is installed I guess?
My other bank, bunq, keeps whining about some service but functions normally nevertheless (I should give Play services access to my "Phone", I don't understand what that entails so I refuse it). N26 and Trade Republic just work.
I don't get wireless payments via Google Pay, but I don't even want that. So I'm really looking forward to Walt [1]. I would even start my sub now if that'd help him get it available in a year... At the moment there is Curve Pay [2], they have their own NFC stack. Bunq also used to have that (back when they were very pro-privacy) but they ditched it in favor of that horrible Google Pay.
[0] https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24630-rabobank-app-no-longe...
[1] https://walt.is/
[2] https://www.curve.com/
Exactly. If these companies were so serious about security, they should also block devices with, let's say, >1 year of security updates backlog. But that's a completely different number of customers compared to negligible Graphene/Lineage/e userbases.
Now, that isn't to say there aren't security issues, nor that QA is perfect on devices they do support (like with any enterprise software projects), but it is a valid reason from a business perspective to not support everything.
Why do you think generally OpenBSD and such platforms aren't supported by commercial software, nor most open-source software? It adds a lot of burden for testing and QA on developers who will need to become intricately familiar with yet another platform.
People stare blindly at some customer support answers and hinge everything on those words, but if you think carefully about how software, compatibility and support work, this all makes perfect sense.
I think what we need to do is all complain in the same way, something akin to: GrapheneOS is the most secure Android option, it's just not catering to Google by sharing all user data with them. You are falling for the false argument from Google that this is about security. It's not, it's more about sovereignty and control. And you and your bank are catering to Google/the US and YOU are throwing YOUR privacy conscious users under the bus, because you do not fully understand the forces at play.
Idk, this can be much improved :)
The bank doesn't care about either. It cares about the risks, costs and opinion of the regulator on how well it evaluates and controls those risks.
If risks can be transferred to an external party and DNB signs on it, sure. If DNB says reliance on this specific external party is a risk in itself, then sure, there will be a plan for that too. The plan could be "if google becomes a problem we can publish a new version of the app using grapheneos attestation anchors in N weeks"
No they don't. At best, they do a cost-effective proxy for what should be done.
Supposedly the Dutch police had "cracked" their phones.
In Dutch https://archive.is/3wawb
According to our information, the reseller did not distribute official GrapheneOS. Using AI tools, he had built his own fork and added mobile device management (MDM) for remote administration. The result was a separate operating system that lacked, among other things, the security updates of the original project.
His signing keys for that system were probably compromised. Anyone holding those keys can build an update that the phones accept as genuine. Such an update was apparently installed on seized phones via ADB (Android Debug Bridge), an interface that requires a USB cable connection, and probably removed the screen lock. The phones could then be examined forensically. On our information, the authorities again needed the phone in their hands. On official GrapheneOS, the same approach would require the project's own signing keys.
https://www.joint-defense-team.com/post/grapheneos-cracked-p...
social media was designed to appear like it is society, endorsed by the same people who _made_ your society
i think its all just an illusion to make you work harder :(
This is so braindead, it’s the same as “a black person committed a crime, lets search all black people!”
If someone with an iPhone commits a crime, will they do the same?
So Peter de Vries is effectively the dutch equivalent of John Smith.
https://github.com/PrivSec-dev/banking-apps-compat-report/is...
I really hope this doesn't mean other Dutch banks will follow suit. It's already quite impossible to actually contact someone at the bank who can understand the issue if it's on the technical side. I have no idea how I would even start to broach this topic with ABN Amro.
My mortgage was with a bank that had a website but no app and I was happy, and then they merged with another bank and only had an app and no website and I was not at all happy (but the bank they merged with also had their own mortgage product with both app and website and I do not know why they didn't migrate to using that platform). I swiftly moved to a bank that incidentally had a lower interest and both a competent app and website, and I noted to the previous merged bank that the reason I was leaving is that they did not accommodate me. Whether that feedback was heard, I'm unsure.
Hopping banks is easy for just savings, but a lot of work and inconvenience for your standard payment accounts, and that's ignoring additional services like mortgages and insurance.
The solution is not voting with your wallet, but either leveraging the DMA or drafting new laws that counter this.
Either Google should be forced to approve secure alternatives like GrapheneOS or companies should be required to also implement AOSP attestation. Or alternatively, remote attestation should be banned completely, but I can understand the argument that it serves some legitimate uses.
Vote with your vote for politicians for common sense regulations that favor the consumer at the expense of everything else.
[1]: https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/acm-savings-rates-lag-beh...
It is also just very hard in practice. A lot of people have their mortgages, savings that are locked for years, etc. at a bank. Also, switching a bank also impacts other family members if you have shared accounts, etc.
In this particular case it's also not fully clear yet whether Wero is starting to enforce this. If that happens to be the case, it's only a matter of time before other banks also start requiring Play Integrity for Wero transactions.
That's not good enough, you also need to convince regular people to do the same. Your vote alone will not achieve anything.
I've completed my transfer this year. I am waiting a few more months to close my Dutch bank account (with the parent company of ASN). Good riddance.
No, it is not troubling, it is realistic for a service with high expectations and reliability expected, on tight schedules/resources
If this comes from Wero as they claim, I guess we Europeans in countries that are covered by Wero are in for a bad time. That said, some Dutch banks also made the migration from iDEAL to Wero and don't require Play Integrity.
If this comes from Wero as they claim, I guess we Europeans in countries that are covered by Wero are in for a bad time. That said, some Dutch banks also made the migration from iDEAL to Wero and don't require Play Integrity.
Thankfully I'm not forced to use it since I can log into the bank and authorize transactions with the government digital signature app, which uses hardware attestation and considers GOS fully secure.
Funnily enough, the bank's app crashes on launch with memory tagging enabled which means they have memory bugs.
Similar thing happened with my Health Insurance. Germany is pushing towards getting rid of health insurance cards in favor of a digital identity. To manage this, use the NFC functionality at the doctor, and log into the insurance app or website for fetching messages, documents or other information, you will in the future have to authenticate yourself using a new authenticator app. Now the problem is, that the app from my insurer does not work! Surely because of some "non-standard Android" b****. Contacting their support is obviously useless, as they have no tech knowledge and assume that I have even less, therefore just regurgitate the same "how to install the app" steps from the Q&A. All I have left is to switch to a different insurance, who's ID app works on my phone.
While this is all very annoying, I do see the point that especially banking and insurance has to be very secure. And they aim to achieve this by obfuscation. Against this one might argue that open code is more secure, as everyone can check it. But this goes both ways, for good and bad intentions. And are there not much more resources and energy behind the bad than the good intentions?
Given Bunq's abysmal security track record it probably means they just forgot to enforce some policy that Wero requires on mobile devices - no matter how annoying these "no grapheneOS" policies are in general, of course.
Let's see how long they let me keep it.
Peak clown computing.
Leaving your phone unlocked basically meant someone could drain your account.
I reported it, zero response. Bunq, not even once.
For starters there is going to be percentage commission on each payment instead of just a flat fee low price like iDeal has. For some reason they felt compelled to introduce buyer protection like a credit card has, instead of just making it a digital debit payment system. And now we are also forced in to the Google ecosystem.
Great. Just great.
Why do they even feel they need the Google Play integrity API anyway? If you are really so concerned about the kind of attacks that supposedly fixes, you better ban Windows, macOS and Linux desktops and notebooks from banking online. Because their security model doesn't even come close to what Android or iOS has.
The app however is only secure as long as your system isn't rooted. To make sure it isn't rooted you need to ask somebody who signed the system image if the integrity still holds.
I heard interesting ideas about phones, such as all phones having secure enclave and hsm which the app is totally using, so you can't just lift both the encrypted secret and it's kek from the same filesystem
This is such a corporate non-answer. If that was the problem, they could just detect the custom ROM and when someone calls support, the support agent could just say sorry not supported and hang up. I doubt that is the real issue.
One troubling possibility is that some security might be implemented client-side. Banks are ahead in security in some areas but far behind in others. Like in some cases you can just take money out of someones account if you know their account number, they rely on manual fraud detection, heuristics, and chargebacks. Instead of standard 2FA, my countries banks use a baroque parallel system. My password was for many years a word like "toast": It had a maximum length, had to be pronounceable over the telephone, was case insensitive etc.. Third party payment providers don't use something like OAuth but directly ask for my bank's password, and they used to just scrape the bank site, and so on.
But I think the real reason is regulatory, political, or due to pressure from the platforms. There is no pressing business or technical reason to go out of their way to block custom ROMs.
UK definitely and I thought EEC banks use a different system that stops that.
It also make me feel safer not to have always on me the key to all my accounts.
https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...
If Wero (assuming it's Wero) can push banks to implement Play Integrity, they can also make some guidelines or make a small SDK to for AOSP remote attestation. It's not terribly hard to implement and some banks already do.
I can imagine in some meeting with the ministry or an industry association that somebody in charge said "implement all safety measures that Google and Apple provide, no excuses" and they just execute it.
I could also imagine there is a real need to do so. Maybe somebody found that criminals use rooted phones to robotically launder money or something like that. Or there was a criminal case where someone got a bank account with a fake ID and used it on a burner phone. Then the developers get a discrete notice from law enforcement or regulatory bodies and are told to close that gap. Who knows?
There is no cohesive strategy. It will literally require a new generation of younger people to replace the old lobbyists here - and some of these younger people will become corrupt lobbyists as well.
Open standards should become a human right. I am not kidding. I fail to see why services in a given country, get tied down to foreign companies and foreign countries.
> This app has started using Play Integrity to block new signups, existing accounts continue to work fine for now.
https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
Is it legit?
There is an alternative to Google's proprietary and unprivate integrity API that every bank now uses (and is at the root cause of this issue):
https://uattest.net
Spread the word.
If Unified Attestation would become a standard, they would use it to entrench themselves over GrapheneOS et al.
AOSP has an API for remote attestation attestation. Banks should just come up with a list of signing keys to be trusted. Heck, they can start here:
https://grapheneos.org/attestation.json
All other banks only allow you to open an account via their app.
https://www.abnamro.nl/en/personal/payments/open-an-account/...
Incidentally I was happy to see that while they're phasing out their previous cryptographic identification device (that you put your bank card in) they will still support some kind of cryptographic usb dongle (in addition to smartphones).
When I wanted to open a second account a few months back, ABN is the only bank I have not tried because, well, I have my first account with them... I could not find similar option with any other, though.
But look at the pages more carefully, and you'll note that there is a way to open an account using just a web browser too (e.g., look at abnamro.nl). The links are deemphasised by using dark UI patterns of course.
ING is being really dirty about this. It should be possible to open an account, and get the OTP hardware device that reads the chip on the debit card, but they don't document how you can open an account without the app. It's probably possible, as existing customers can bank without the app, but you will probably have to call them.
Banks would love to get rid of all those nasty people without approved smartphones, but that would cause political pushback.