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.