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Google's plan to restrict sideloading on Android has a potential escape hatch for users
(www.androidauthority.com)
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this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
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It need only check at install time.
Correction: SSL certificates can expire before someone would want to continue being able to install any given app.
Sure, the developer needs to keep the certificate up to date and re-sign the APK on occasion.
So any APK I download will just expire at some point in time that's probably really annoying to know, and then I have to dig through the internet again so I can install the app again?
If it's anything like how Windows does it, you would still be able to override it. It just gives you a scary warning and hides the option unless you click "more info" or something.
Another option is to allow otherwise-valid signatures after expiration. It's generally still possible to check them.
That completely nullifies the entire point of signature validations.
How? Expiration doesn't grant an unauthorized party access to the private key.
There's zero cryptographic reason to have a signed date at that point.
Which nullifies the point of certificates having an expiration date (limited window for exploiting a compromised certificate, possibility of domains changing hands), not the point of validating the signature (tie responsibility for apps to who owned a domain on a specific date, allow third parties to create blacklists of bad developers).
These two are identical for software.