148
Apple already shipped attestation on the web, and we barely noticed
(httptoolkit.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
148 points (96.8% liked)
Privacy
32177 readers
602 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Basically, the idea is that a server can refuse to serve you (or degrade your experience with captchas/heavier restrictions) unless you (your device) complete a "challenge". This could be something like the browser (through a system API) checking some device details like
etc. Basically making sure the "environment" is clean and not tampered with (trusted).
The problem is with what defines a "trusted" environment. It could start at just making sure the device isn't rooted (like Android's Safetynet/Play Integrity check; most people don't root their device & don't/won't care, also easily justifiable since it can be a security vulnerability because the device is "wide open").
Then, like the article mentions, the device makers (Google (phones, chromebooks), Microsoft (Windows, Xbox), Apple (macOS, iOS, visionOS, etc), Meta/Facebook (Oculus), etc) could change their terms for attestation and deny approval on stricter, potentially anti-consumer criteria such as device age (forcing you to buy more things).
It's also important to note that Google is doing this already as well. It's almost impossible to use Google with my VPN provider as I'm slammed with 5 captchas every Google.
There are a lot of websites for me that straight up refuse to load if I have a VPN. Even non-important sites.
I don't think sites can request attestation yet, for vpn ips it's usually that the ip/ip block has shown "suspicious" behavior & got reported either manually or picked up by bot sensors.
(Now of course it's also bad to let Google and friends be the arbitrator of good and bad IPs, famous for the destruction of truly self-hosted email (among other things))