There are no guarantees about how secure a device is without ro.secure being set -- at this point only devices with it set have been shipped, so there hasn't been a security review for the system running without it set. I doubt any one person actually knows what all is impacted by not having it set.
As far as carriers, the big one is giving the user root access. Sure, if you have ro.secure not yet, then the user can get root access... but because this configuration hasn't been productized, there are some potentially disturbing repercussions such as the fact that all you need to do is leave adb access on, and anyone can plug your phone into a computer and have root. If a non-developer phone is going to ship without ro.secure set, at the very least I think it would be required to have a facility to set a root password. Bottom line: if you are going to ship a device without ro.secure set, be sure to examine all of the code that this impacts to make sure you are okay with the result. On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 6:02 PM, Disconnect <[email protected]> wrote: > Doesn't the setting of ro.secure depend on his needs? (At least, the > engineers on IRC are always claiming that the "proper" android setting is > off and it is the evil carriers who insist on turning it on, etc.) Turning > it on may be the right answer but it doesn't seem like it is the only one. > > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 8:30 PM, Dianne Hackborn <[email protected]>wrote: > >> When you are creating the user image for your device, you need to sign >> everything with your own private keys that nobody else has access to. You >> also need to make sure the ro.secure system property is set, and that the >> build phase for generating the final dexopt files into the system image is >> done (so dexopt doesn't need to be run at boot). >> >> This is the "mydevice-user" configuration. Generally development will >> happen with "mydevice-eng" or "mydevice-userdebug", but the result of these >> build configurations is not intended for shipping on a device. >> >> >> On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 5:21 AM, cht <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> >>> The security keys under the directory android\build\target\product >>> \security is used to sign the apk for defferent security level. do >>> they need to generate some new keys of theirself or do not change it >>> for some compatible problems? >>> >>> thank you >>> >>> cht >>> >> >> >> >> -- >> Dianne Hackborn >> Android framework engineer >> [email protected] >> >> Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time to >> provide private support, and so won't reply to such e-mails. All such >> questions should be posted on public forums, where I and others can see and >> answer them. >> >> > -- Dianne Hackborn Android framework engineer [email protected] Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time to provide private support, and so won't reply to such e-mails. All such questions should be posted on public forums, where I and others can see and answer them.
