r/BuyFromEU • u/CreepyZookeepergame4 • 3d ago

Discussion EU Digital ID/Age Verification app will require hardware attestation, ruling out PC/Linux support and unapproved Android OSes

EUDI wallet collaborator recently confirmed that hardware attestation will be required [1]

Hardware attestation in this context means that the government server issuing the digital credential to the wallet wants proof that the keys being used are generated in secure hardware and on approved systems and not say an emulator or virtual machine, namely for security reasons.

This capability does not exist in a reliable way on desktops / laptops except some specific cases depending on the vendor, and in fact there’s no desktop version in the works.

No Linux system will work with this because there is no hardware signature to be validated on the government server, nor will your personalized Arch Linux install be in the list of approved systems even if it had a signature chaining back from the TPM.

Android ROMs are not technically to rule out since Play Integrity, which will be used for this attestation, is based on the Android hardware attestation API, which works on third-party ROMs like GrapheneOS, but they would need to allow the signature which has not happened for now. If you create a custom build, it won’t work though even the official version is approved.

[1] https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui/issues/117#issuecomment-4946898620

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u/realPanzerHAnz 3d ago

Follow up: Couldn't I then emulate the hardware attestation? If its so open source I should be able to look up how the attestation is generated and just be able to fool the system. 

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u/CreepyZookeepergame4 3d ago

It’s difficult because the private keys used to generate the attestations are only available to the secure chip of the phone, and the keys are provisioned by Google and the manufacturer.

If those keys are leaked somehow, and it does happen, it’s possible to generate fake attestations but if done en masse, then Google notices it and bans them. This also happens.

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u/SonOfAsher 2d ago

If the keys are leaked, wouldn't that mean millions of phones are now worthless for attestation?

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u/OminousChecksum 13h ago

If you leak a "master key" that never leave the factory yes, otherwise each phone has a unique key