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Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

arstechnica.com

191–200 of 372 posts

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google OS-level integration is absent, and while Google Play Services can be installed, you're still missing things like Chromecast. Also, there's more manual configuration (although I don't remember exactly what, I've never used GrapheneOS). A lot of stuff you do get for free, but not all of it, and stuff that's been removed as a "feature" isn't always stuff that nobody wants.

Is it really missing Chromecast? I read that it works if you have Play services (but haven't tried)

Nah, works without issue. None of the complaints mentioned in this thread is true. There are some issues wrt corp spyware like intune device management, but the kinks are being worked through and figured out (tldr: required apps from corp must be manually installed when activating profile).

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. This is an issue in America specifically. Where there is a Google Apple duopoly on tap-to-pay tech. Can be worked around though with smart watches like Garmin watch with Garmin Pay. In many other regions there are alternatives like Curve Pay or tap-to-pay functionalities in banking apps

Google Pay also works with a Pixel watch connected to a GrapheneOS phone, FWIW.

Oh is that right? That's cool. That might be enough to give Graphene another go, especially since Android Car is supported now. Thank you.

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be a total mindfuck if it turns out that Graphene is less secure[1] than stock Pixel, and this is all part of an ANOM-style honeypot operation that has Feds hyping it up, to trick interesting targets into adopting a less-effective security posture. 1. Such as via slower 0-day responses, for instance. This is a thought experiment, I'm nor alleging that this is what it is.

GrapheneOS releases patches very quickly, often even faster than OEMs do. But patches are only useful for fixing individual known vulnerabilities. GrapheneOS additionally focuses on defending against whole classes of vulnerabilities. [1] For example, in addition to fixing memory corruption bugs in individual system components, GrapheneOS has deployed memory protections for the entire OS in the form of hardened_malloc…

Reminds me of that one case a few weeks back where Graphene wasn't allowed to release a patch because Google wasn't planning on releasing a patch for it for a few more months.

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now in grapheneosin the updates settings it allows you to apply Google's upstream security patches, but grapheneos is forbidden from releasing the source code for these until a certain time later. You can read more about it on their blog. I have them enabled. At least I can rest easy knowing the Grapheneos Devs are able to inspect the code on users behalf even if they can't yet release it.

Will Graphene release the patches concurrently with Google? If there's a lag, then then Graphene is a tiny bit less safe in terms of one-day/n-day bugs. Not having the source of the patch adds some friction to all attackers, but reversing vulnerabilities from binary patches has a long history.

They generally patch much faster than Google.

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#195
post #42

Another great thing about GrapheneOS (besides security) is that Google Play Services can be installed without elevated privileges and even in a separate profile which can't run in the background. This makes the phone suitable for both normal usage and for those cases where you need to use some "official" app. It passes Play Integrity "MEETS_BASIC_INTEGRITY" but of course doesn't pass higher levels but not because it'…

My bank (largest local in my country) shipped a beta version of their app where my pixel8p with grapheneos was flagged as insecure this summer.

Called them up, explained the issue and a couple days later a new build without the issue appeared for install.

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#196
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No American company has a choice when the Feds want data stored on a company's server. That doesn't stop Apple or any other company from designing devices that attempt to keep prying eyes out of the data stored on your device.

The government has ways of twisting the arms of uncooperative people/organizations into providing all the backdoors they need. Everything from increased tax and regulatory scrutiny to "discovering" CSAM on executives' computers or phones. The government does what it wants because it's the government. Mere laws generally don't stand in its way for long.

>The government does what it wants because it's the government. Mere laws generally don't stand in its way for long.

Sounds an awful lot like terrorists.

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#197
post #158
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither have had any known BFU on the latest iOS for years. AFU is occasionally possible but most of the leaks had latest software and hardware as still protected. Powering off the phone is always still a good idea though if you can.

That's not true. Cellebrite has working BFU and AFU exploits for recent iOS and usually catches up to the latest iOS versions and hardware in weeks or a couple months. They do not have working brute force support for the Pixel 2 / Pixel 6 or later / iPhone 12 or later due to the secure elements but can still exploit the devices in BFU mode and extract the data available before unlocking. iPhone 17 may work out better…

Citation needed.

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#198
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government has ways of twisting the arms of uncooperative people/organizations into providing all the backdoors they need. Everything from increased tax and regulatory scrutiny to "discovering" CSAM on executives' computers or phones. The government does what it wants because it's the government. Mere laws generally don't stand in its way for long.

The government certainly objected when Apple designed an implementation of encrypted cloud backups for iDevices. That didn't stop Apple from eventually rolling out encrypted cloud backups anyway. Apple also refused to insert a backdoor into iDevices when James Comey ordered them to do so. They took the FBI to court and forced them to back down. Google is perfectly capable of fighting too, but their business model put…

Security theater for marketing purposes. End users have no way of verifying that their cloud backups are encrypted, and Apple is the same company that complied with the NSA's illegal, unconstitutional conspiracy to conduct warrantless bulk surveillance on American citizens and lie about it to congress: PRISM.

Fortunately, no intelligence officials faced any consequences whatsoever for perjuring themselves to congress, or for engaging in a unconstitutional criminal conspiracy, so we can trust that the system of laws we've developed is working as intended and that this will never happen again.

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#199
post #76

How come not a single Cellebrite device got "lost" and thoroughly analyzed? Surely quite a few police depts are rather lax.

I wonder why they haven't switched to a more lucrative model of remote unlock/forensic acquisition using something like WebUSB.

Re: Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

#200

Wow. I was just thinking about jumping ship from iPhone to Pixel.

All iPhones were vulnerable according to the last available iOS support matrix.

It seems that a bunch of them are vulnerable in different states. My concern is mostly with BFU and SOS mode (which seems pretty close to BFU). I can't seem to find much that is worrying in these states.
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