Leaker reveals which Pixels are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking

They couldn't answer the question most on my mind: "We’ve reached out to Google to inquire about why a custom ROM created by volunteers is more resistant to industrial phone hacking than the official Pixel OS. We’ll update this article if Google has anything to say."

Short answer: Google is a business that can be compelled by the federal government in ways that nonprofits are resistant to. Ron Wyden identified one of these weaknesses in 2023: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...

Let's be very clear: this is still Google's choice. Google could build a phone that they can't be compelled to do anything to after the phone is sold to their customer, but Google alone chooses to not invest in the security of the phones they're selling to their customers. Because: what is good for the government is now equally good for Google.

Do we not remember how Google immediately enabled TLS everywhere, internally, post-Snowden [0]? Remember when Google was "outraged"? Where are those people now? They surely don't work at Google anymore. It's amazing how enshittified Google and Apple have become in a decade.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24751821

> how enshittified Google and Apple have become

I don’t know about pop-ups or whatever, but as far as mobile security Apple appears to be running the table. Last cellebrite leak showed they couldn’t do anything in BFU, and you can tell Siri to put it back in BFU without hands while being arrested.

Cellebrite is like the Kmart Blue Light Special of Israeli spyware, when you compare it to Greykey and NSO Group offerings. I would not use their capabilities as the be-all end-all.

> the Kmart Blue Light Special

Hello fellow old timer. Do kids today even get this reference other than possibly just on context? My other favorite old store was a place called Gibsons where their stores signage had each upper case letter as an individual square. After it went under, more than one location became SBINGOS joints where first/last squares were no longer lit.

Another old-timer here who grew up with Gibsons. It was the only grocery store in town back in the days before WalMart invaded. Ammunition, camping gear, dry goods, garden supplies, farm and ranch supplies, blue jeans, shirts, ties, overalls, etc. They sold everything under one roof in a town of 2500.

I thought they had all been swallowed up and shut down until I moved up here to N Texas and was surprised to find a Gibsons here. It took me a while before curiosity took hold but several years later I visited the store, approx 2003-2004ish, and found they still used old-school cash registers, had no UPC scanning capability and every item had a price tag stuck to it. I think they have since moved into the more modern world locally but the store is still there and is a good source for items that you used to need to go to the town's original hardware stores to find. Some of the items on the shelves may have been in inventory here since the 1970's or 1980's. It's a bit like a time machine where you can get obsolete stuff in a pinch if it is still in stock.

I worked slapping price tags on items in KMart back in the day so I too understand the reference. Glad I'm done with that.