eSIM on GrapheneOS no longer requires Sandboxed Google Play \ stacker news ~security

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eSIM on GrapheneOS no longer requires Sandboxed Google Play

2983 sats \ 17 comments \ @JuanMiguel 26 Jan security

zaps forwarded to @final (50%)

eSIM management will no longer require Sandboxed Google Play.
eSIM management binaries are isolated from Google Play services.
Nor will they make direct connections to Google via Google Play Services to activate eSIMs.

This is great news for eSIM users!! 🥳

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12 sats \ 2 replies \ @JuanMiguel OP 26 Jan

@final when is this expected to go live?

131 sats \ 1 reply \ @final fwd 26 Jan

Updates typically happen weekly or just a little over. Should be later on this week or early in the next although I'm not the one to make guarantees. You can see the changelogs for how often updates are.

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @final fwd 27 Jan

@JuanMiguel Out now!

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @RdioActiv 26 Jan

I'll probably always have Google Play enabled, but one less thing tied to it is always a good thing! Glad my donation to GrapheneOS is going to good use!

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @haimot 27 Jan

Great news. grapheneOS rocks.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @zuspotirko 26 Jan

Dependencies and dependencies of dependencies are an endless hell. I know this on a much smaller scale from work. Glad They made it.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @badabing 26 Jan

Nice!

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @OriginalSize 26 Jan

What is an eSim? Does that allow us to be shadowy superphoners?

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @badabing 26 Jan

Yes it does! Check out silent.link.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @sime 26 Jan

Its like a virtual SIM card.

Popular commonly supported amoung iPhones. Android support is limited.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 26 Jan

Is this different for CalyxOS?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Zk2u 26 Jan

Woo!

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @andy 30 Mar

Any idea why Graphene does not use https://gitea.angry.im/PeterCxy/OpenEUICC ?

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @final fwd 3 Apr

Missing features and implementation issues. It doesn't support all carriers nor implement all the required baseline functionality including wiping of eSIMs, which the future duress password feature plans to erase.

We allow eSIM activation without any Google services, it uses the stock OS package but totally isolated and isn't dependent on any Google Play services. There is little to no privacy improvement either as you need to make connections to the provider to activate eSIM regardless. There isn't much value in working on one for GrapheneOS for that reason either.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @andy 8 Apr

Why did eSIM previously rely on google services, but now it doesn't?

So the stock OS eSIM package is open source so there is also no reason to use anything else?

Generally I'm wondering if any eSIM tools in android can help with https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mobile-broadband/ModemManager/-/issues/485 .

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @final fwd 8 Apr

Why did eSIM previously rely on google services, but now it doesn't?

There are now additional shims to make it work without the sandboxed Google services. This is an example of a commit for it: https://github.com/GrapheneOS/platform_frameworks_base/commit/813cd8f45d0a49bb6775453ef0744441f133f6ef

Activating an eSIM would perform data sharing with Google services. The EuiccGoogle package alone doesn't send data directly to Google, so isolating it from the Google services and making it work standalone helps. We also have a toggle to completely disable that binary which is enabled by default.

So the stock OS eSIM package is open source so there is also no reason to use anything else?

It's part of a closed source package. At the time it was the only package allowing eSIM activation and today it is still the only package allowing all the relevant features. One of the Google eSIM apps handle the updates for the eSIM secure element's firmware, which is needed for security updates.

Any idea how the CalyxOS eSIM support works compared to Graphene? CalyxOS doesn't seem to indicate much about what they are doing with eSIM.

They use the same Google packages but without the toggle to deactivate or isolating it.

Generally I'm wondering if any eSIM tools in android can help with https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mobile-broadband/ModemManager/-/issues/485 .

If someone put their time into it, maybe? Wouldn't really know, not looked at this.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @andy 8 Apr

Any idea how the CalyxOS eSIM support works compared to Graphene? CalyxOS doesn't seem to indicate much about what they are doing with eSIM.