• Soot [any]@hexbear.net
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    11 hours ago

    I don’t think this is accurate. What Google is doing is making the whole ecosystem depend on Google’s approval to be allowed to work.

    In this case, they seem to be claiming they’re just doing real-time checking of processes as they run (presumably stuff like checksuming loaded libraries, looking for memory overruns, etc.), and so detecting certain signs of malware or system corruption.

    To be honest, based on the announcement it sounds completely unnecessary, but I don’t think they’re at all doing what Google is doing.

    • khorovodoved@lemmy.zip
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      11 hours ago

      That is kinda what google does as well. It calculates checksums of certain system components and compares it to a checksum in database.

      What you are describing is usually called antivirus. But they call their system “integrity”. That word is used for other things in this context.

      • Soot [any]@hexbear.net
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        6 hours ago

        Then I have no idea what you’re referring to by ‘what google is doing to android and tried to do to web’ because as far as I know, that isn’t relevant.

        What I’m describing is definitively not antivirus. Antiviruses use heuristics (and known checksums of bad things) to scan processes/files/network traffic/system calls for dangerous patterns. They’re not doing real-time checksuming to detect system corruption or malfunction, they’re not comparing known system files because that’s complex and hard to do, and seems to be what the company is claiming here.

        I have no idea what Google checksuming you’re referring to but as far as I’m aware that’s a not thing they’re doing to android and trying to do web. Everything Linux (including Android) does some amount of checksums at certain points because they’re useful, but not real-time process checksums. I assumed you were surely referring to them requiring that apps get signed by their certificates, making everything subject to their approval. Which is different from realtime checksumming for integrity.