The latest Pixel security updates now contains boot chain firmware security improvements caused by our vulnerability reports to Google. The reporting developer who provided a PoC mitigation and the #GrapheneOS Foundation as a whole are now credited on the Android Security Acknowledgements.
https://source.android.com/docs/security/overview/acknowledgements#april-2024
The two vulnerabilities (now assigned as CVE-2024-29745 and CVE-2024-29748) were announced by us as being exploited in the wild, targeting a stock Pixel device. Exploitation were done by forensics companies who design (or more likely, buy) zero-day exploits to perform data extraction with physical access and sell them as a product to LE or state agencies. Companies in the business include Cellebrite, MSAB, Magnet (GrayKey) among others.
CVE-2024-29748 refers to a vulnerability providing the ability to interrupt a factory reset triggered by a device admin app, by holding volume down you are were able to cancel the reset caused by apps like Duress or Wasted. It appears they've implemented a partial solution in firmware.
CVE-2024-29745 refers to a vulnerability in the fastboot firmware used to support unlocking/flashing/locking. Forensic companies are rebooting devices in After First Unlock state into fastboot mode on Pixels and other devices to exploit vulnerabilities there and then dump memory.
Here is Google's confirmation of them: https://source.android.com/docs/security/bulletin/pixel/2024-04-01#Announcements
There is no knowledge of this affecting a GrapheneOS device because of the defences already in place, however since these discoveries we have placed additional focus in protecting data not at rest with security features like the USB controls, improving the auto-reboot feature and working on future features like no-reboot factory resets, a duress PIN/password and second factor device unlock.
A new GrapheneOS update is released now with the full security backports, rather than a partial release from them not being available yet.
#GrapheneOS receives fourth Android Security Acknowledgement of the year. This time we are credited for moving wipe-without-reboot to the stock OS.
CVE-2024-32896 which is marked as being actively exploited in the wild in the June 2024 Pixel Update Bulletin is the 2nd part of the fix for CVE-2024-29748 vulnerability we described here:
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None of this is actually Pixel specific.
Bulletin:
https://source.android.com/docs/security/overview/acknowledgements
Attribution to us:
https://source.android.com/docs/securi
CVE-2024-32896 and CVE-2024-29748 refer to the same vulnerability of interrupting reboot for wipes via the device admin API, which applies to all devices.
CVE-2024-32896 is a full fix in AOSP as part of Android 14 QPR3. It's not at all Pixel specific.
This is being widely incorrectly reported in tech news coverage. Pixel Update Bulletins are almost entirely patches for vulnerabilities which apply to other devices too. Android Security Bulletins are the list of what other OEMs are required to fix, not the full list of patches.
We explained this in our previous thread:
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/112204437363495338
CVE-2024-29748 was a mitigation for the issue implemented in the Pixel bootloader. Full solution is implementing wipe-without-reboot, which is now a standard feature in Android 14 QPR3 released as part of AOSP.
Our 2024052100 release backported the upstream wipe-without-reboot feature being shipped in the June 2024 release of Android (Android 14 QPR3): https://grapheneos.org/releases#2024052100.
We extended it to make it more robust via extra redundancy in our 2024060400 release:
https://grapheneos.org/releases#2024060400.
There were 2 main issues:
1) memory not wiped when booting firmware-based fastboot mode, allowing exploiting it to get previous OS memory
2) AOSP device admin API depends on reboot-to-recovery to wipe before Android 14 QPR3
Neither of these issue is being fixed outside Pixels yet.
Each month, Android has a new version released. These are the monthly, quarterly (QPR) and yearly releases. The baseline monthly security patches are NOT the monthly releases of Android. They're backports of a SUBSET of the patches with High/Critical severity, not all patches.
Most devices only ship the backported patches to older Android releases (12, 13 and 14). Pixels ship the monthly, quarterly and yearly releases. Other devices will mostly get the 2nd vulnerability fix when they update to Android 15. They'll have to fix the 1st issue on their own.
We have a thread about forensic company capabilities at:
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based on leaked Cellebrite documentation. Shows GrapheneOS does a much better job than iOS/Android blocking exploits and only Pixel 6 and later or iPhone 12 and later successfully stop brute forcing.
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