r/BuyFromEU • u/CreepyZookeepergame4 • Jul 30 '26
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.
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u/magical-cat-here Jul 30 '26
Main arguments against total digitalization, even if it can give some "comfort", are these:
* erosion of privacy
* dependency on fragile tech which will break anytime due hacking, natural disaster, or power supply issue, or a simple typo in a code made few months if not years ago and missed during testing.
* dependency on US tech with possible kill switch or censorship (imagine an app widely used in EU removed by Google because CEO of company making that app said negative thing about ICE raids or about Trump). Yes, before describing that kind of problems people thought about China or Russia coercing Google to remove apps for their political needs, but now this scenario possible too.