HN title: "France threatens GrapheneOS with arrests / server seizure for refusing backdoors"
LQDN: "Dans ces articles, la cheffe de la section cybercriminalité du parquet de Paris – à l'origine de l'arrestation de Pavel Durov – menace également les développeurs·es de GrapheneOs. Interviewée, elle prévient qu'elle ne s'« empêchera pas de poursuivre les éditeurs, si des liens sont découverts avec une organisation criminelle et qu’ils ne coopèrent pas avec la justice »."
In the (very short) linked article: No mention of arrest, server seizure or backdoor, and a more nuanced take. Loosely translated summary: Some users have a legitimate need to protect their communications. IF we find links with criminal organizations AND there is no cooperation, then we might take action. They're specifically taking the approach of a case by case hack of single phones which might cost up to a million euros. Is this an issue if there's a warrant?
This seems blown out of proportion?
France has made it clear they expect to have a backdoor in end-to-end encryption apps and disk encryption. They've been saying that it's unacceptable not to have a backdoor in a bunch of these news stories they've gotten published by contacting the media. They've said if we don't cooperate with that, they'll take similar actions against us as they did SkyECC and Encrochat meaning hijacking our servers and trying to have us arrested.
Le Parisien has 2 articles about this, not only one, and https://archive.is/UrlvK is one of the places they talk about going after us if we don't cooperate with providing them access to devices. It's not possible for us to provide an update which bypasses the throttling for brute force protection so what they're asking isn't even helping them break into specific devices but helping them compromise security for everyone in anticipation of rare cases of criminals using devices. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46038241 explains lack of technical ability to compromise security after the fact. Titan M2 is specifically designed with insider attack resistance so that Google making an update disabling the brute force protection won't be accepted by the secure element without the Owner user successfully unlocking first. We don't have the signing key for the Titan M2 firmware anyway. This is part of our required hardware-based security features which we're working on providing in a Pixel alternative with a major Android OEM working with us right now. We talked to them about the France situation already and it does not negatively impact our partnership. It may be a good idea to speed up an official announcement with them to counter the narrative being pushed by France's law enforcement agencies now.
I appreciate the answer and the work on GrapheneOS! It seems there's a lot of work going on with the QPR1 release and this French matter doesn't make things easier for the team. Good luck!
Le Parisien is not the french state. I doubt you had any interaction with the french authorities at all.
You are unable to any legal recourse because none of your rights have been violated (yet).
To be fair, the quote in the second article is from Johanna Brousse who is behind the Durov arrest.
> "Mais ça ne nous empêchera pas de poursuivre les éditeurs, si des liens sont découverts avec une organisation criminelle et qu’ils ne coopèrent pas avec la justice."
> “But that won't stop us from prosecuting publishers if links to a criminal organization are discovered and they fail to cooperate with the justice system.” (DeepL)
I understand this can be seen as more threatening even if the whole quote softens this a bit.
Only a total idiot would wait to actually be arrested, fined, or even harassed, before doing something about it.
Maybe he is going to get arrested, maybe we are observing an persecution complex.
> They've said if we don't cooperate with that, they'll take similar actions against us as they did SkyECC and Encrochat meaning hijacking our servers and trying to have us arrested.
No, they haven’t.
You are letting your paranoia talk by widely amplifying the content of two newspapers articles in media affiliated with the far right.
I’m quite surprised by your reactions to be fair because both SkyECC and Encrochat were actually affiliated with organised crimes. As far as I know, GrapheneOS isn’t.
What is cooperation? How are they supposed to unlock the phone?
Unless you're saying 'compelled to use their private keys to publish an update' or something along those lines, in which case I would say the original headline is correct.
There is no law allowing the police to do that in France so that can’t be what cooperation means.
In the case of Telegram, it was about providing meta data when subpoenaed and moderating the unencrypted part of the application.
There is little reason to believe it is about anything else here.
Edit: Happy to hear what the people downvoting actually disagree about as usual. At the moment I have read a ton of mud thrown of France here - including someone from GrapheneOS implying they won’t hire from France unless someone relocate which must one of the most hilarious take I have ever read coming from someone from North America - with very little actually substantial shared, which, to be fair, seems to be becoming the norm here.
Um.... There's no law doing what now? [0]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#FranceAnd how do you hack a single phone without a backdoor in every phone?
You use the signing keys for GrapheneOS to push an update to a single user.
Please read what you just typed.
That doesn't offer a way to bypass disk encryption for data protected by the per-profile lock method. GrapheneOS cannot bypass the brute force protection implemented by the secure element. Google cannot bypass the brute force protection either because they designed the Titan M2 to require the Owner user successfully unlocks in order to update it. Weaver + insider attack protection for the secure element are among our hardware security requirements (see https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices for a list) which are being implemented by an OEM we're working with to provide a Pixel alternative. Weaver has a table of user authentication tokens mapped to random tokens used as part of the final key derivation. The authentication token is made with a hash of the initial key derived from scrypt, then the final key derivation in TrustZone combines both with hardware-bound key derivation to get the key derivation key. Weaver implements very aggressive time-based throttling. We have the original delays documented at https://grapheneos.org/faq#encryption but it ramps up faster now.
Aside from that, people can use a strong diceware passphrase on GrapheneOS due to us massively raising the character limit from 16 to 128. This is far more usable on GrapheneOS because people can combine it with fingerprint+PIN secondary unlock instead of fingerprint-only secondary unlock. 5 attempts are allowed for fingerprint unlock and the 2nd factor PIN being entered incorrectly counts towards that so even a random 4 digit one works well. That's convenient to use with the passphrase only having to be entered 48h after the last successful passphrase unlock and after reboot.
We also won't do it and cannot be forced to do it under Canadian laws. France's laws are going to be as relevant to us as North Korean laws once we've finished replaced our OVH servers in Beauharnois, Canada with a Canadian provider. France could currently force OVH to mess with our static website or mail server but we haven't done anything illegal so it would be outrageous and a diplomatic incident due to violating Canadian sovereignty during a time period when foreign server hosting companies being subject to foreign law is already in a recent news cycle. We're not waiting around for them to hijack our website though.
How is this different from a backdoor in every phone?
Some authority compels me to give them signing keys so now they can push anything they want, to any device they want?
They can't bypass disk encryption that way:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46038241
It does appear to be what they want from us, but it's not possible to bypass the Weaver disk encryption throttling via compromised OS updates or even secure element updates. It's fully not possible to bypass the security of a strong passphrase, which we encourage via optional 2-factor authentication support for fingerprint+PIN as the main way people unlock to make using a passphrase as the primary lock method after booting or 48h timeout much more convenient.
Just wanted to say: don't listen to people who say you're crass or wrong. GrapheneOS' actions and words are great and a boon.
Well that's really good to know.
Been a happy user of Graphene since the Copperhead days. Thanks for all the work you do. I know you've endured a ton of shit.
Once they've established a rule that you have to help them in all cases, what stops them from forcing you to push an update to a phone while the user still has it, to collect information from the phone while actually unlocked and in use?
With a know bug in a product that you didn't disclosed.
https://web.archive.org/web/20221124085649/https://www.washi...
France basically always had very good PR portraying the country as "romantic" and a champion of freedom but reality has almost always been very different.
It was very unfree in the 16th century, what led to the French revolution, which was a nightmare, then military dictatorship. The 20th century was not much better and never forget France collaborated very quickly with the third Reich. Then De Gaulle has some sort of soft military dictatorship with a secret police and a total control of the media.
Today their police is very aggressive, their justice system highly politicized. And as always a dominating bureaucracy.
The state is getting more and more aggressive as drugs and violence are rampant.
It is by far the country in Europe I had the worst interactions with the police.
There are a lot of beautiful things to see there but today I try to avoid it for business and leisure.
I agree
The thread linked is much more balanced than the title given
> This seems blown out of proportion?
Par for the course on hacker news.