I want to share this post because I was disappointed to see this popular smartphone cracking tool works very well across Android versions and devices while iPhone enjoys relative security.
The graphic also shows premium devices specifically are vulnerable to their tools, so one cannot argue that the problem is funding or cheap devices getting owned because of dumb changes by the vendor – premium devices fare not much better. Even Google controlling the hardware and the software of their Pixel line remains vulnerable to data extraction while the latest iPhone versions aren’t.
To me, this sounds like the state of Android physical security might be inferior. Why? What can be done to fix this? Perhaps is it because Android is more popular globally so they get more work targeting Android?
It could also be coincidental that at the time the documents leaked, the iPhone stuff was being finished up and there is actually not that much difference if you have an attacker who has lots of time and money.
EDIT: Removed wrong information. EDIT: Added more material for discussion.
Android, afaik, is less secure by default to begin with. More freedom, more options to customize, more attack surface. Also, just because Cellebrite can’t pwn iOS 17.4 yet, doesn’t mean it can’t do it a month ahead from now.
Another very important factor I can see is Apple’s walled garden, where they could literally remote control your device. Through the new rapid security response (or whatever they called it in marketing wank) they can push updates to all active iOS devices more or less overnight - at least if the vulnerability is known to them and they have a patch. Compare that with Android where some devices don’t receive any updates after the initial release.
The attack vector for brute forcing encryption passwords doesn’t have much to do with the freedom and features. What does matter, is that Apple has control over the entire production chain. Few companies do.
Google mostly does, but their software isn’t as good as Apple’s. However, GrapheneOS on a Pixel is resistent against Cellebrite the same way iPhones are.
I wish Android vendors took security more seriously, but I don’t think they care much, because their users don’t really care. They’ll care as long as they use the security features to force you to use their ad ridden software (like how Samsung will refuse to load the camera firmware properly if you unlock the bootloader on some devices).
Google tries, but seems to prefer usability over security in small ways that GrapheneOS doesn’t. Things like “disable the USB connector when the device is locked”, breaking plenty of work flows but protecting against whole classes of exploits.
No way graphene isn’t leagues stronger than iPhone no?
They’ve even submitted their hardened malloc to upstream Linux, which is definitely more secure
To be fair Android does that now too with mainline and every OS upgrade they make more modules that get updated from the play store rather than OS updates.