It's an emotional discussion about Google not supporting MTE on Pixel 11 (old news of August, GrapheneOS had to roll back that statement in September [0]).
Now the question is whether MTE will be enabled by Google as part of a future OS-upgrade, to which there is no definite answer AFAIK
This reads like “your front door lock is the perfect place for security services to have a master key.” True, but not strong as an argument against having a lock.
Even that analogy fails because MTE is in addition to existing countermeasures against memory corruption attacks. In the worst case, compromising MTE just means you don't have MTE, not that you get arbitrary code execution.
Someone high up got tired to pull over every pixel user at the border.
With the new Motorola, TSA line are going to move faster that ever!
If you care about privacy, stay away for the moto release and stick with pixel.
I missed a news story. Context?
For reference Pixels have about 1% market share, the graphene phones will be the same hardware as normal moto flagships and 99% of TSA agents won't be able to differentiate motorola models
You're off by a factor of 3, unless you count global market share, which includes random brands unlikely to be in the US like xiaomi or huawei.
https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/us-smartphone-m...
Moreover motorola flagships (ie. the only model that support grapheneos for now) are likely a fraction of the market share of motorola as a whole, so OP is still correct in that motorola grapheneos phones are more identifiable.
>the graphene phones will be the same hardware as normal moto flagships and 99% of TSA agents won't be able to differentiate motorola models
That argument could be used for pixels as well, which are also just generic black rectangles, especially the "a" models that lack the distinctive camera bump. Also if DHS/ICE really wanted to, they could avoid this problem altogether by requiring travelers to self-declare what phone they have. Sure, you can lie, but then you committed a federal offense by lying on immigration paperwork.
If you're doing comms for a serious project, it's probably best not to speculate on the justification of an internal decision at a different org, even if you're reasonably sure.
I think at this point is too late for complicity, they are actively fighting against GrapheneOS anyway. You either fight back, or wait until you loose all the leverage
Because? The obvious implication is you're saying Google will abuse their monopoly to hurt you if you upset them. Is that what you're implying? Or is it user trust, or something else you think is improved by avoiding such speculation?
The much more interesting recent news IMO is that Google is not allowing (non-Samsung) OEMs to sell devices with GrapheneOS:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49946698
See the last paragraph.
For example, non-Samsung Android OEMs aren't allowed to directly sell devices with GrapheneOS and Google will only permit it within a quota. It can and is being worked around and there will be devices sold with GrapheneOS as the stock OS without Google restricting how many can be sold.
My guess is that the workaround is that Motorola sells them with Google-certified Android. A third-party (non-OEM) buys them in bulk and preinstalls GrapheneOS.
But this is really end-90s/begin-00s Microsoft levels of anti-competitiveness. I'm surprised that (particularly non-US) regulators are not investigating them yet.
If an OEM ships grapheneos then what? There's a quota? What's the source? And if they go beyond then what? They can no longer be certified for the playstore? But they can still ship grapheneos and grapheneos doesn't respect the play X terms of services anyway.
So what's really going on here?
The linked comment was posted a day ago by what appears to be an account used for speaking officially about GrapheneOS.
So, like, you could go ask.
Can you get arbitrary code execution on the RTOS from another app? No? Then adding layers to protect apps from each other is meaningful.
What you're saying isn't too far from "Well, if the attacker has physical access they can just freeze and decap the memory to read all secrets, so like there's no point in even hashing passwords or fixing XSS"
If you're talking about the baseband, AFAIK it's already isolated on both iPhones and pixels. Not sure about other androids.
Have they introduced some other mitigations, for eg UAF, to improve memory safety?
It seems possible that nixing MTE is to prevent stomping on some TLAs exploits?
Don't forget the notorious vertical pink line issue! Luckily that had (has?) an extended warranty programme.
- Suddenly being without a phone while you're travelling or dealing with something important is generally not fun
- Anything stored locally that isn't backed up is gone
- You can't transfer over your eSIM yourself
- Probably going to be a pain in the ass to get into accounts where the now brick was set up for 2FA
Sadly I never, ever put the 8 Pro in any case or protective shell, and the damage of repeated minor drops took its toll. The screen was just cracked a tiny bit around the corners, but eventually the upper-right corner began a creeping black amoeba of darkness, and finally the entire touchscreen became unreliable, I suppose due to that damage, so I decided to bail out. Repairs were exorbitant so I decided to take Google's own trade-in deal.
Retr0id•56m ago
arusahni•51m ago
[1]: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117194007157499435
Medea•51m ago
nubinetwork•46m ago