While WEI is thankfully cancelled, it’s not entirely cancelled… They’re planning on making it available still in WebViews with the intention that websites can check if a malicious Android app is trying to do a phishing scheme.
Seems like such a niche “security” feature… what are they really trying to accomplish here? Something seems fishy to me
As someone who uses GrapheneOS but knows very little about the technical side of things, what implications does this have for the OS? I’ll actually just not use a smartphone anymore if I’m going to be forced back onto the privacy nightmare that is stock Android.
They will strip out the DRM part, maybe. GrapheneOS, other than even Firefox or any Linux Distro, has many DRM packages installed. Widevine and lots of others.
So it may be that they dont even remove it from the Vanadium Webview. But if they do, Apps may break as the Developers looove the extra control. And then GrapheneOS needs to do annoying work again, to for example have a sandboxed Webview-DRM app that can be enabled per-App.
I’d expect them to support basic integrity. They already do that for apps, so no reason to not expand it. It’d break compatibility.
Since they don’t (want) to offer a way to circumvent the basic integrity check right now, I don’t see why they would undo the expansion into the webview.
I don’t know about graphene, but doesn’t some android roms allow to use custom ( more private Webview implementations) instead of default ?
Yes, they provide these Webviews, meaning they get a shitload of work probably, to remove that DRM BS. Until random apps (like all those Playstore apps) stop working on non-DRM webview… yay!
Like, there are already services that just work with apps. If these apps dont work anymore, well…
Even on “stock” android (at least the Pixel version) the option is there in the developer settings.
