Hardening cellular basebands in Android

23Sha-ger

https://security.googleblog.com/2023/12/hardening-cellular-basebands-in-android.html

Baseband security and exploitation has been a recurring theme in security conferences for the last decade.
Researchers have also made a dent in this area in well-known exploitation contests. Most recently, this area has become prominent enough that it is common to find practical baseband exploitation trainings in top security conferences.

Very interesting read.
The Pixel 8 has the Tensor SoC from Google, but the baseband modem is from Samsung.
Does it mean we will have to wait for Samsung to implement this, or you think they share
the firmware source code with Google under some NDA?
Because this + MTE + GOS will make the device security substantially better (against remote attackers)

lordiont

23Sha-ger Thanks for sharing, interesting read indeed. I'm currently on a rabbit hole regarding this very topic. I thought I would share with you this other interesting article on the Google Security Blog.

It talks about a new toggle (supposedly introduced in Android 14) to harden the security of cellular networks.

As an aside, I have to say that I really dislike the Samsung Exynos modems in the newer Pixel lineup. They offer terrible performance, and after years of testing, I've determined that they are to blame for a decent chunk of people's problems with battery life on GOS.