Post #1508889

2026-03-17 12:21 UTC

> I should be able to tell my bank to only trust devices running an OS signed by the grapheneos key, and more importantly I should be able to tell them to trust an OS signed by my key. How do you know that your OS installation doesn't include malware? Like there have been many cases in the last few years where `npm` modules were found to contain malware. Who says that's not also the case in some modules that are a part of your OS? And more importantly, who is legally liable if malware actually does cause harm? E.g. malware acts on your behalf and sends your money to some criminal organization. Not only did you lose money, but now you're a suspect of supporting a criminal organization! Of course that issue might be alleviated if you simply don't have any money to send anywhere in the first place. That might be a viable alternative, but it only works for some people, i'd say. Or you could also set a daily transaction limit of say $100 that you can use to buy groceries; to limit your losses that way. The limit ofc cannot be changed from your phone alone, you need to go to a bank physically to change it or sth. Otherwise malware could again change it on your behalf.

Replies (3)

@rollerbang@lemmy.world 2026-03-17 12:33

And who guarantees that your PC doesn't have malware? Seriously, people will gobble up all the shit served to them without a question asked or giving it a second thought.

Open ##1508895
@Don_alForno@feddit.org 2026-03-18 09:31

>How do you know that your OS installation doesn't include malware? How do I know that when I do online banking through a browser on a Linux or Winslop PC? Yet somehow I can just log in on those with my credentials and be done with it. (And please dom't give them ideas.)

Open ##1508896
@eah@programming.dev 2026-03-17 19:19

One possible way to deal with this and very nearly return to the former freedom-to-tinker status quo is to send the bank your custom OS along with a computer-checkable formal proof that the bank's app, while running on your OS, behaves as it would be expected to under the stock OS. With homomorphic encryption, it might be possible to do this without revealing your custom OS, only its one-way hash. The bank can then verify that the proof is correct and then accept transactions with attestation from your custom OS. This would enable installing a custom ROM that can be used for online banking without having to go through some cabal/consortium. The only caveat is something of this magnitude has never been done before. It's a research project for sure. It would take many man- and compute-hours. But it would be very cool.

Open ##1508897