Disinformation campain from madaidans-insecurities and privsec.dev (originally GrapheneOS devs)
Disinformation campain from madaidans-insecurities and privsec.dev (originally GrapheneOS devs)
Since 2022 (afaik) GrapheneOS and its devs' blogs have been distributing disinformative FUD campaigns against F-Droid, Firefox, Linux and even uBlock Origin, and they promoted accrescent.app and Chromium for years.
They spammed developers to upload their apps to accrescent.app. https://gitlab.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox/-/issues/7
- here is one of there spam account
- this account copy-pasted this same text in 9 popular open-source project within just 1 hour
md
Have you considered or are you planning on putting your app on Accrescent (app store focused on security, privacy, and usability)
Accrescent is a private and secure Android app store built with modern features in mind.
It was just endorsed by GrapheneOS (considered by many to be the most private and secure mobile operating). GrapheneOS also now has accrescent in their app store.
Right now there is only 9 apps on it. So any new apps added get great installation opportunities from the privacy and security minded community.
Anyway, I really like your app, and would love to see it on Accrescent because it's so easy to install and update apps compared with f-droid, plus much more secure!
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I'm a security and privacy conscious individual, not associated with Accrescent or GrapheneOS (though I use them both).
Xoxo Olivia
- here is the screenshot
They created many blogs with different domains:
- https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/guides/linux-hardening.html
- https://privsec.dev/posts/linux/linux-insecurities
- https://privsec.dev/posts/android/choosing-your-android-based-operating-system/
- https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux.html
- https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/android.html
- https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html
- https://simpleprivacy.fr/basiques/smartphones/
Suspicious GitHub accounts:
- https://github.com/qua3k (madaidans webdev graphaneos ex-dev)
- https://github.com/RKNF404 (secureblue maintainer)
- https://github.com/d4rklynk (simpleprivacy.fr owner)
- https://github.com/Wonderfall/ (privsec.dev side account)
- https://github.com/Ganwtrs (graphaneos dev, privsec dev)
- https://github.com/TommyTran732 (privsec.dev co-owner, grapheneos ex-dev, privacyguides ex-dev, secureblue maintainer)
- https://github.com/akc3n (privsec.dev co-owner and graphaneos member and employer)
- https://github.com/thestinger (grapheneos founder)
https://wonderfall.space/marches-android-alternatifs/
(Translated from French)
I've never shied away from expressing my doubts about F-Droid https://privsec.dev/posts/android/f-droid-security-issues/ (I'm mainly referring to its official repository here).
Here they admit privsec.dev is theirs.
and privsec.dev authors are akc3n and TommyTran732
Also, here is a second proof that https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/ is owned by the same person/group:
also
- https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/android.html
- https://privsec.dev/posts/android/android-tips/
As you can see, they distribute FUD across many different domains (these are just my findings).
Also, I find that https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/f-droid-foss-android-app-store/13650 and https://www.privacyguides.org/en/os/linux-overview/ privacyguides team are referencing this BS "research."
Here is good example how this referance loop create a big problem
Someone write a github issue on secureblue about they want to keep firefox and look at the answer
md
Thanks for your comments. I'll respond to them individually:
> Please note that Madaidans Article is now pretty old. Many issues still persist, but 3 or so of the linked ones where closed 5mo ago, due to being solved.
Regardless, that article is not the only reference point here. See also the grapheneos article https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
This project will not switch to firefox unless/until GrapheneOS does.
Do you see the problem? That says that article is not the only referance also reference grapheneos but grepheneos article is the main source of madaidan"s
For the public record, please do not trust anyone who references this disinformation.
Also in lemmy we have at least 1 of their troll @dnzm@lemmy.ml I'm really sorry awkly when I paste this URL https://lemmy.zip/u/Stilic@lemmy.ml Lemmy's autocomple converted this and thanks @LytiaNP@lemmy.today for warning
please ban this troll and investigate if there is other trolls, we don't want trolls in fediverse
- Edit: added proof for spam claim, both source account and screenshot (btw this is just one account I find there could be more)
- Edit: every link I referanced also has archive.org snapshots
- Edit: fixed markdown formatting Edit: added akc3n (privsec.dev co-owner and GraphaneOS employer) and qua3k and added info about RKNF404 and Ganwtrs
- Edit: added secureblue example
- Edit: added more information about spam
- Edit: I'm sorry for wrong lemmy user link
- Edit: removed debunked word in title for clarify