agnostic-apollo

@MishaalRahman @Techmeme > developer whose signing key accounts for over 50% of total known installs holds priority for registration. All other developers will be required to use a different package name. This would fuck up all the FOSS forks with same pkg name and test builds with public signing keys

@MishaalRahman @Techmeme > Complete a cryptographic challenge: You must sign a dummy APK with the corresponding private key and upload it to Android Developer Console. This formally verifies your ownership of the key used to sign your existing Android app. #register-package" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">developer.android.com/developer-veri…

🔐BREAKING: Google will begin verifying the identity of ALL DEVELOPERS who distribute apps on Android, even if it's outside the Play Store! This is to prevent malware developers from using anonymity as a shield. Full details👇 Tip @Techmeme! 🔗androidauthority.com/android-develo…

@MishaalRahman @Techmeme F-Droid signs APKs itself by default and app devs do not have access to private keys to do such challenges. As per a quick check, of the ~8000 apps on F-Droid, only ~700 are signed by devs themselves via reproducible builds.

@MishaalRahman While moving AOSP development private was understandable due to huge amounts of extra work required for maintaining it in public, this seems to be a very anti-development behaviour.

@MishaalRahman Changing the default reference device to a virtual one does not justify not releasing device trees or full kernel commit history of real devices known for development, especially for existing devices and/or after a 30/60days delay for any potential security reasons.

🚨Google is NOT killing AOSP! Google has come out and refuted speculation that it's discontinuing AOSP. However, the company just made it tougher to build AOSP for Pixel devices. Here's how👇 androidauthority.com/google-not-kil…

Announcing GitHub Secure Open Source Fund, a new way to help secure the open source ecosystem for everyone, with $1.25MM committed to fund and help secure 125 projects. Applications are open now for current maintainers of open source projects. github.blog/news-insights/…

@nahKbayOS @MishaalRahman Running under Termux or in chroot should be same, but should give slightly better performance than linux in KVM, the main advantage/difference of Termux/chroot is that it won't be isolated from Android. Yes, should be able to access Linux terminal from Termux over ssh.

@MishaalRahman So it means using chroot with termux and root gives better performance than this terminal app? Can we access linux terminal from termux instead of running in webview?

Many users have asked me: What are the pros and cons of using Android's upcoming Terminal app to run Linux apps versus something like Termux? Here are the differences, as explained by a developer of Termux: "Advantages: 1. The VM will have standard Linux Distributions, so all the packages of the distro should be downloaded from its packages repositories. Termux only provides ~2000 most popular packages in its repositories, other distros can have 10,000-1,00,000 packages. If running under proot-distro in Termux, then one can have similar amount of packages, but everything runs under proot, which is slow, and not all packages may work and proot is not stable on old devices. Disadvantages: 1. The VM will have performance loss due to KVM usage compared to Termux running natively. 2. The VM will be isolated from the Android system, this is where most of the problems lie. I doubt external storage (`/sdcard`) will be allowed to be accessible directly from inside the VM, so use cases of users processing files on their storage, like downloading music/video/image files, etc with Termux and accessing them in other apps, would not be possible. The Android APIs won't be accessible inside the VM either, like ones which apps like Termux:API or Tasker uses, lot of users rely on them to automate things, a way to fix that would be to run a `sshd` server in Termux and then connect to it from the terminal in the Linux app with `ssh` and then run the commands, but that will cause some latency issues. Termux also supports on-boot tasks for its own commands, there may be some way to boot the VM at startup, depending on if there is external access, otherwise users would have to manually start the app. 3. The VM will be isolated, so any root access will be only for inside the VM itself, and not for root access to Android system, like Termux can get with su/sudo if rooted with Magisk, etc. 4. Terminal will be inside a WebView connected over the server, so should have slower performance than a native Terminal in Termux using native Android views. WebViews are generally slow for large amounts of text, especially for scrolling, like try opening the Android docs/source site on even a recent phone with ~8GB RAM, older phones often just crash the browser. One could run a `sshd` server in the VM and then connect to it from Termux with `ssh` and that should likely be faster, and should support multiple terminals at the same time. I don't think currently the VM app supports multiple terminals, that's another difference, although terminal multiplexers like `tmux` could probably be used inside the one terminal that's available. 5. Not all devices will support AVF, at least not for Android `< 16` or higher, so Termux will still be needed on such devices. Additionally, running a whole Linux distro in a VM will require CPU, storage and memory in addition the one already being used by Android OS itself, so low end devices will likely have issues with performance or multi-tasking. Termux runs on Android host itself, and uses only `< 100MB` RAM, and `150MB` (arch-specific)/`230MB` (universal) storage space by default, so runs great on even Android `5`."

Termux has been approved to receive a grant from the NLnet Foundation (@NLnetFDN) under its NGI Mobifree program for the June 2024 call. Check nlnet.nl/news/2024/2024… and termux.dev/en/posts/gener… announcements for more info.

@MishaalRahman For details on the system linker exec hack, check #system-linker-exec" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">github.com/agnostic-apoll…

If you rely on the Termux app on Android for anything and daily drive a OnePlus, OPPO, or Realme device, heads up: the OxygenOS 15/ColorOS 15 update seems to be killing off Termux processes, but only if you install the app from outside the Play Store. It seems this issue doesn't happen if you install Termux from the Play Store, as the Play Store version uses a hack that seemingly doesn't get detected and thus its processes don't get killed off. More details in this Reddit thread: reddit.com/r/termux/comme… In addition, there seems to be an ongoing issue with running Linux packages via PRoot, with users seeing a message that says a "malicious app" attempted to damage their phone.

@CucumberHack @termuxdevs github.com/termux/termux-…

⬆️-GitHub de #Termux ⬇️-App Termux #playstore Alguien me lo explica.... 🤷

@MishaalRahman 25-30mins to optimize, Pixel 7 Pro, only have 312 apps that came as stock on A13. Optimizations was pretty slow for A13 security updates too.

BEFORE YOU UPDATE TO ANDROID 14, PLEASE DO THE FOLLOWING! I want to know how long it takes for your device to apply the update. I'm ESPECIALLY interested in seeing how long it takes for it to "optimize apps". So after the Android 14 update finishes downloading, tell me how long it takes to install the update and then optimize apps. I don't need an exact time, a rough estimate is fine! So in summary, I need to know: a) How long it took to "optimize apps"? b) What device you have. c) How many apps you have installed. I'm trying to collect some data so we can get Google to speed up the OTA update process (I've heard some folks at Google are interested in this as well, but they need a push to get the ball rolling!)

@eddiejaoude Yeah, you should. Maybe it will feel like you don't even need BioDrop anymore 😅

@agnosticapollo lol thanks, let me check it out

I curated a list of Open Source repos, you can find it on GitHub search 😂

@xPublicProfilex @MishaalRahman It will be empty on production devices, they are meant for development android builds. #commands-to-disable-phantom-process-killing-and-tldr" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">github.com/agnostic-apoll…

@MishaalRahman @agnosticapollo I do not have feature flags. When I go to defeloper options and and open feature flags there is empty screen. I have android 13. Do you maybe know why?

A few changes in Android 12L Beta 3

The GitHub Accelerator program for which Termux was selected for will have its Demo Day/Graduation on June 28, 2023. @agnosticapollo will be presenting a 5 min demo on behalf of Termux at 9.40PDT/16.40GMT. accelerator.github.com

I got selected for the @github accelerator program for the Termux app project! Thanks a lot to the accelerator team and the selection committee for this great opportunity! Hoping this to be a success for us open source devs and github and a great learning opportunity. @termuxdevs

@ArtemR @LinusEkenstam Like I would believe anything you say, stop telling lies about the real great Artem!

@LinusEkenstam Seems like it hallucinates quite a bit and just makes up wrong facts. I am not a public speaker, haven't written several books, especially Android Security Internals, don't regularly speak at conferences and events, and apkmirror was founded in 2014. So same as ChatGPT.

That did not take long, search engine with AI baked in. What did this domain cost?! you.com

@Najam_Khalil123 @MishaalRahman #commands-to-disable-phantom-process-killing-and-tldr" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">github.com/agnostic-apoll…

@MishaalRahman @agnosticapollo Did it make its way to android 13

An update on the phantom process issue: Google has just submitted a patch that adds a toggle in Developer Options to disable the monitoring of phantom processes! android-review.googlesource.com/c/platform/fra… We probably won't see this until Android 13, though. CC @agnosticapollo

The only way to currently fix is to clear app data completely/reinstall, which will require login into accounts again and configuring settings, etc. Otherwise, if you have root access you can clear the cached links table manually, the link in the root tweet has the commands.

It will also slow down the app significantly with posts not opening up for many seconds due to processing of the links. The devs said that they will look into it in future. Note that support has ended for Android 7 now, so it may never receive a fix. reddit.com/r/redditmobile…

If @Reddit android app (possibly ios too) is consuming hundreds of MBs or few GBs of app data. Check reddit.com/r/bugs/comment… for why.