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.

Lots more devices are safe BFU than just Apple's. It's not that complicated on a technical level - it's basically full-disk encryption.

Apple sells the illusion of security and privacy, but they're not meaningfully more secure or private except from the device's owner. Remember when they made a big deal of blocking Facebook tracking, while simultaneously adding their own intrusive tracking?

>Lots more devices are safe BFU than just Apple's. It's not that complicated on a technical level - it's basically full-disk encryption.

That's not the full story. Using LUKS encryption on your linux laptop might make it "safe BFU", but only if you're using a high entropy password. Most people don't want to enter a 24 character password to unlock their phone, so Apple/Google have to add dedicated security hardware to resist bruteforce attempts, hence the vulnerabilities.

True but those chips also exist for PCs. Some USB security keys have this feature.