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Security/Privacy

Google Pixel devices are the best Android devices available on the market for security and privacy.

They allow locking the bootloader with a custom Android Verified Boot (AVB) key in order to preserve security and privacy features when installing a custom operating system, such as verified boot which verifies that the OS has not been corrupted or tampered with, and rollback protection which prevents an adversary from rolling back the OS or firmware version to a previous version with known security vulnerabilities.

They also include a hardware security module (Titan M2, improving on the previous generation Titan M) which is extremely resistant to both remote and physical attacks due to being completely isolated from the rest of the system, including the operating system. Titan M2 ensures that the device cannot be remotely compromised by requiring the side buttons of the device to be physically pressed for some sensitive operations. Titan M2 also takes the role of Android StrongBox Keymaster, a hardware-backed Keystore containing sensitive user keys which are unavailable to the OS or apps running on it without authorisation from Titan M2 itself. Insider attack resistance ensures that Titan M2 firmware can be flashed only if the user PIN/password is already known, making it impossible to backdoor the device without already knowing these secrets.

Google Pixel device kernels are compiled with forward-edge control-flow integrity and backward-edge control-flow integrity to prevent code reuse attacks against the kernel. MAC address randomisation is implemented well, along with minimal probe requests and randomised initial sequence numbers.

Google releases guaranteed monthly security updates, ensuring Google Pixel devices are up-to-date and quickly protected against security vulnerabilities.

Pixel 6-series and 7-series devices are a large improvement over the already very secure and private previous generation Pixel devices. They replace ARM-based Titan M with RISC-V-based Titan M2, reducing trust by removing ARM from the equation. Titan M2 is more resiliant to attacks than Titan M, and is AVA_VAN.5 certified, the highest level of vulnerability assessment. Google's in-house Tensor System-on-Chip includes Tensor Security Core, further improving device security.

Pixel 8-series includes Armv9's Memory Tagging Extension, which dramatically increases device security by eliminating up to 95% of all security issues caused by memory-unsafety.

Support

Pixel 4a (5G), Pixel 5, and Pixel 5a, are supported for a minimum of 3 years from launch.

Pixel 6-series, Pixel 7-series, Pixel Fold, and Pixel Tablet, are supported for a minimum of 5 years from launch.

Pixel 8-series is supported for a minimum of 7 years from launch, putting it on the same support level as Apple; Google have even surpassed Apple in this regard, as Apple does not commit to a support timeframe for their devices.

Gentoo Linux is a highly modular, source-based, Linux-based operating system which allows vast customisation to tailor the operating system to suit your specific needs. There are many advantages to such an operating system, with the most notable being the ability to optimise the software for security, privacy, performance, or power usage; however, there are effectively unlimited other use cases, or a combination of multiple use cases.

I have focused on security hardening and privacy hardening, placing performance below those aspects, although my system is still very performant. Some of the hardening I apply includes stack protection, signed integer overflow trapping, and GrapheneOS' hardened_malloc memory allocator.

Chromium is a highly secure web browser which is often ahead of other web browsers in security aspects. It has a dedicated security team and a very impressive security brag sheet. Chromium's security features include a strong multi-layer sandbox, strong site isolation, Binding Integrity memory hardening, and control-flow integrity (CFI).

GrapheneOS is a security-hardened, privacy-hardened, secure-by-default, Android-based operating system which implements extensive, systemic security and privacy hardening to the Android Open Source Project used as its base codebase. Its hardening includes closing gaps for apps to access sensitive system information, a secure app spawning feature which avoids sharing address space layout and other secrets AOSP's default Zygote app spawning model would share, hardened kernel, hardened memory allocator (hardened_malloc) to protect against common memory corruption vulnerabilities, hardened Bionic standard C library, stricter SELinux policies, and local and remote hardware-backed attestation (Auditor) to ensure the OS has not been corrupted or tampered with.

GrapheneOS only supports high security and well-supported devices which receive full support from their manufacturers, including firmware updates, long support lifecycles, secure hardware, and overall high security practices.

For an extensive list of features GrapheneOS provides, visit its official features list which provides extensive documentation.

Vanadium is a security-hardened, privacy-hardened Chromium-based web browser which utilises GrapheneOS' operating system hardening to implement stronger defenses to the already very secure Chromium web browser. Its hardening alongside Chromium's base security features includes disabling JavaScript just-in-time (JIT) compilation by default, stubbing out the battery status API to prevent abuse of it, and always-on Incognito mode as an option.

Vanadium's source code, including its Chromium patch-set, can be found in its official repository.

Molly is a security-hardened, privacy-hardened Signal client which hardens Signal by using a variety of unique features, allowing locking the database when not in use, and utilising Android StrongBox to protect user keys using the device's hardware security module.

Molly is available in 2 flavours:

• Molly, which includes the same proprietary Google code as Signal to support more features.
• Molly-FOSS, which removes the proprietary Google code to provide an entirely open-source client.

Conversations is a well-designed Android XMPP client which serves as the de facto XMPP reference client and has great usability.