Final

Security specialist and member of the GrapheneOS Foundation.

Posts my own and not endorsed by my employer. AI slop and Nostr DMs ignored.

Email: [email protected]
Matrix: f1nal:grapheneos.org

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npub1hxx76n82ags8jrduk0p3gqrfyqyaxnrlnynu9p5rt2vmwjq6ts3q4sg75y

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Profile Code

nprofile1qqstnr0dfn4w5grepk7t8sc5qp5jqzwnf3lejf7zs6p44xdhfqd9cgspz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43qzrmhwden5te0dehhxarj9ekk7mgzcjchk

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relay.ditto.pub

nostr.mom

nos.lol

nostr.bitcoiner.social

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npub1hxx76n82ags8jrduk0p3gqrfyqyaxnrlnynu9p5rt2vmwjq6ts3q4sg75y

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Last Notes

2026-07-30 23:08:47 UTC

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An HDD, they don't have wear levelling. Some SSDs may disable wear levelling at the significant cost of drive lifespan.

2026-07-29 21:28:39 UTC

In response to recent suggestions mentioning it:
> If you need plausible deniability, you must not use VeraCrypt to encrypt any part of (or create encrypted containers on) a device (or file system) that utilizes a wear-leveling mechanism.
https://veracrypt.io/en/Wear-Leveling.html
The decoy profile concept many have suggested for years is far more flawed than this. It wouldn't hide the presence of other profiles and would be trivially identified. Basic forensic software on a laptop would identify it without exploits. It would also make exploits far easier.

2026-07-28 03:39:35 UTC

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We don't make features designed to trick people with no technical skills because people who were compromised ALWAYS underestimated the capability of the threat that targeted them. You shouldn't rely on slight of hand or pretty tricks, you should just have *more security*. GrapheneOS is becoming far more popular and recognizable so you can't guarantee you will be trusted that your 'decoy' is legitimate to someone.
All enforcement agents use widespread commercially available forensic extraction tools. You don't need to be smart to use it. Please Google screenshots of Cellebrite UFED, a child could navigate it, it is that simple. It doesn't need a special device and you can run it on a laptop.
It uses ADB to perform extraction and a secondary user does not have access to configure the features. There is zero deniability designed with the user profile approach and that's why it wouldn't be considered with many implementations people make up. Owner also hosts critical OS functions, so it cannot be wiped. It would require a massive redesign on how the OS users and filesystem encryption is laid out.
Virtualization is the way to go for something like this.

2026-07-28 03:29:44 UTC

Because I am seeing discourse on the Elon app about it, see this old reply:
#nevent1q…p9x9

2026-07-27 21:44:13 UTC

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It's trivial to detect an alternate profile without access to developer options and the main ADB shell. It will be detected as part of standard forensic data extraction. Wiping secondary profiles can be easily detected too. Everyone is going to know the feature exists if it's broadly deployed.
A deniability feature would need to be set up very differently to what people think it should be like.
With GrapheneOS being able to run and use Virtual machines, we'd want to work on a feature where there is a virtualized GrapheneOS in the future where it could be set up like this.

2026-07-26 16:46:42 UTC

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Duress makes all data unrecoverable. The entire disk on Android OSes are encrypted and duress instantly wipes the Secure Element and SSD encryption metadata. Data on the Secure Element is one of many parts that derives the credentials to decrypt data.
FBE on Android provides separate encryption credentials for profiles, so deleting a profile deletes all data on it permanently.
See this article for a detailed overview: https://osservatorionessuno.org/blog/2026/05/demystifying-phone-unlocking-tools-a-technical-overview/

2026-07-26 11:25:49 UTC

#GrapheneOS has strong defenses against data extraction. It heavily builds upon the standard security features provided by Android 17 and the most secure hardware available for Android. Currently, only Pixels provide the hardware security features and updates required by GrapheneOS. That's going to change in 2027 thanks to our partnership with Motorola Mobility and progress being made by Qualcomm.
Disk encryption provides strong protection for data. Even the most sophisticated attackers aren't going to be directly breaking it. They either need to exploit the OS while in After First Unlock state or brute force the PIN/password.
Android 16 QPR2 calls for a secure element implementing rate limiting ramping up delays. It's 4 hours after 10 and 41 days after 15. Only 20 attempts are allowed. For usability, It rejects the most recent 5 unique failed attempts early to avoid wasting attempts on repeated errors. GrapheneOS only supports devices implementing the latest generation secure element rate limiting.
https://source.android.com/docs/security/features/authentication/rate-limiting
The secure element on the supported devices also has insider attack resistance. That's implemented by requiring the Owner user to successfully authenticate before the secure element firmware can be updated. A valid signing key and greater version number aren't enough alone. The purpose of this is preventing any government from bypassing the rate limiting by coercing the creation of a firmware update removing the rate limit.
Pixels have used a secure element with an internal timer implementing rate limiting and insider attack resistance since the Pixel 2 launched near the end of 2017. Here's a post about this from back in 2018:
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/05/insider-attack-resistance.html
The secure element and integration into the OS has become far better since then, but it shows this goes back a long way and isn't a new feature.
GrapheneOS also raises the character limit for passwords from 16 to 128. This enables using high entropy diceware passphrases not depending on the secure element rate limiting.
To make a strong passphrase convenient to use without ruining it with biometric unlock, GrapheneOS adds an optional 2nd factor fingerprint PIN. We reduce the allowed fingerprint attempts from 20 to 5 and failure to enter the correct 2nd factor PIN counts towards it. This enables using 6-8 random diceware words as the main unlock method required in Before First Unlock and fingerprint+PIN using a short PIN for convenience. Using a valid fingerprint prompts to enter the 2nd factor PIN which is needed to complete unlocking the screen and hardware keystore.
GrapheneOS greatly improves the exploit protections for the OS with hardened memory allocators and other features. It heavily uses hardware-based security features including hardware memory tagging (MTE) to protect against exploits. A partial overview of those protections is here:
https://grapheneos.org/features#exploit-protection
GrapheneOS adds specialized protection against attacks with physical access too. For example, it blocks new USB connections at a software and hardware level by default while locked and disables USB data as soon as there are no active USB connections.
GrapheneOS shipped a locked device auto-reboot timer back in June 2021. It can be set between 10 minutes and 72 hours. We enabled it by default using 72 hours and then lowered it 18 hours. It automatically returns the device to Before First Unlock state due to our memory zeroing as part of tearing down the OS and booting. We got Pixels to add memory zeroing for booting the firmware fastboot mode in April 2024. Apple and Google added a locked device auto-reboot timer in iOS 18.1 and Android 16. For Android, it can be enabled with the Android Advanced Protection Mode. Our implementation is better for multiple reasons but it's a useful feature regardless.
Android uses separate encryption keys for each secondary user and Private Space. GrapheneOS adds support for putting both back into Before First Unlock state without a reboot via end session for secondary users or toggles for either to do it by default. It's still much better for the device to be rebooted to get the main user back at rest, completely clear leftover data from RAM and block secure element updates.
Our duress PIN/password feature is a minor feature fitting into the bigger picture. It wipes the device when it's entered in any OS prompt for the current profile's PIN or password. It will wipe the device when entered into the authentication prompt for changing a sensitive setting or anything else requiring it, not only the lockscreen. It works across every profile including secondary users and Private Spaces, not only the main user.
There are multiple ways to use the duress PIN/password feature including writing it down on a phone case or a paper kept in a wallet. People should carefully consider how to use it in an actual duress situation where there can be physical or legal consequences for wiping the device. GrapheneOS doesn't require it to protect data from being extracted from the device, but it takes recovering it completely off the table even with the PIN/password for each profile on the device.
GrapheneOS doesn't depend on the duress PIN/password to protect user data. It's one of the tools it provides among the major privacy and security improvements it offers as a whole. Our features page provides an overview of what GrapheneOS offers compared to standard Android 17. It covers most of the major features we provide and many of the minor ones but there's also a lot more beyond it. Our release notes are a lot more exhaustive since we make sure to cover everything when it's added, changed or removed.
https://grapheneos.org/features
https://grapheneos.org/releases#changelog

2026-07-23 22:45:37 UTC

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According to the defendant's motion to suppress in this case, the authorities refused to read him his rights and also made extreme, unfounded accusations such as checking for CSAM (which was never implicated to be under their possession nor was the defendant ever indicted for it, it is not in any court docs) to try and coerce them into unlocking their phone. It appears he chose the Duress knowing he was not given his rights. I would be interested to see how this case develops.
Authorities CAN and WILL lie to you to try and incriminate you even if you have done nothing wrong. Do not talk to them, do not discuss your day and if you are in a questioning then exercise your right to remain silent and get a lawyer.

2026-07-23 22:34:26 UTC

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/23/cop-city-protester-phone

2026-07-23 18:10:33 UTC

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Relevant
#nevent1q…acc6

2026-07-23 18:06:33 UTC

432 Linux vulnerabilities in 24 hours (2026-07-09)
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce

2026-07-22 18:26:01 UTC

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GrapheneOS does not create identifiers for users nor track them. All services we do host require the minimum for that service to function, for example when requesting an OS update we would only be able to see an IP address checking an update for a certain phone model.
Android has an "Advertising ID" but this is Play Services dependent and can be deleted in their settings.

2026-07-19 17:38:28 UTC

Join Josh from Side Of Burritos and our Community Manager spring-onion in a live conversation about everything #GrapheneOS on July 20th!
PDT - 10:00 / 10:00 AM
EDT - 13:00 / 1:00 PM
UTC - 17:00 / 5:00 PM
BST - 18:00 / 6:00 PM
CEST - 19:00 / 7:00 PM
AEST - 03:00 / 03:00 AM / July 21st
To accommodate for different preferences the stream will be available simultaneously on both YouTube and a self-hosted instance of Owncast. Additionally, we will also be watching for your questions and comments in the media channels within our Discord and Matrix chats.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=56-DCAHU29Y
https://sideofburritos.com/live/
https://grapheneos.org/contact#community-chat

2026-07-08 19:03:57 UTC

New #GrapheneOS PDF viewer update with swipe gestures for pages and also a full migration to Kotlin.
#nevent1q…4xrh

2026-06-27 13:45:13 UTC

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It's a known issue because the AOSP apps are old. When they get replaced with new ones having the latest VCF spec will be on there.

2026-06-26 05:25:18 UTC

#GrapheneOS releases based on Android 17 are in Stable now. Enjoy Android 17!
#nevent1q…fnnm

2026-06-23 23:16:34 UTC

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The bookmarks? We have that:
https://npub1hxx76n82ags8jrduk0p3gqrfyqyaxnrlnynu9p5rt2vmwjq6ts3q4sg75y.blossom.band/d0b6d9085fe85d577b20668259c01729d0b9d6a0a540a9598194a6856a91ebfb.jpg

2026-06-23 21:04:21 UTC

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(My client is very slow right now and so is internet so apologies if I send this multiple times)
The Owner user currently must be unlocked at startup first because that profile has critical OS functionalities running there. Sorry about that.
I would follow the same advices in the comments about how to get it serviced without needing them to unlock the device.

2026-06-23 20:57:27 UTC

An Android 17 release of #GrapheneOS is now available in the Alpha channel for users who do not want to use an experimental channel. This is a major release with some more slight UI changes and an introduction of a Desktop Mode that can be enabled by plugging in a device to an external display via USB-C DisplayPort Alt Mode on Pixel 8 and later. We are regularly working on more fixes in the mean time and it is likely a later release will end up in Stable as there are more releases ready to come now.

2026-06-17 22:10:09 UTC

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This is in our issue tracker and could be something to fix when we remake the Dialer app. We are currently doing an overhaul of all of the default apps, namely Messaging and Gallery.

2026-06-16 21:45:48 UTC

Today is the official release day for Android 17. We've already fully ported #GrapheneOS to Android 17 and are in the process of pushing the code to our public repositories. We're building a final official release based on Android 16 QPR2 today and we'll do an initial Android 17 release tomorrow.
We've already tested the Android 17 port of GrapheneOS on the Pixel 6a, 7, 7a, 8, 10a, 10 and 10 Pro Fold. It will be possible for people to start building and testing it themselves later today once we finish pushing the code. We'll start the process of public testing for official releases tomorrow.

2026-06-16 21:45:04 UTC

2026-06-07 09:11:33 UTC

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2. It's a Google / AOSP issue they deliberately hold back patches to critical / high vulnerabilities for over a month. It's also an issue of the OEMs who have these early access but don't issue all the patches. GrapheneOS Security Preview does.

2026-06-07 09:06:54 UTC

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OEMs get early access to the patches and are allowed to push them on their OS, but no one does them all. Google and Samsung do a small amount of them. Since they are embargoed and not open source immediately, they aren't released into AOSP until months later with their scheduled security patch level.

2026-06-06 22:27:07 UTC

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Not really needed, Molly is just a Signal fork with some added privacy and security features. If you use Signal you can use Molly too.

2026-06-06 19:27:53 UTC

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Molly (hardened Signal client) is building a Signal server software called Flatline. This will allow creating Signal deployments with servers that aren't Signal's. They'll also be working on features such as supporting accounts without phone numbers.
#nevent1q…w4tr

2026-06-06 13:42:00 UTC

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The big issue that the post is trying to address is that AOSP and therefore derivatives like LineageOS are also missing these patches for up to 6 months. When OEMs get security preview patches, they may only push ~10% of them earlier than their assigned date too. When switching you could be *less* patched, and it is the upstream's fault.
GrapheneOS on the security preview channel is the ONLY Android distribution delivering all available patches on a regular basis. Despite the embargo preventing releasing the sources, it is easy to use reverse engineering tools to compare differences between standard and security preview builds to find the vulnerability AND the embargo doesn't protect against a resourceful threat actor somehow getting that access.

2026-06-02 18:28:14 UTC

June 2026 Android Security Bulletin notes CVE-2025-48595 is being exploited in the wild. It's being widely misreported in tech media as a 0-day vulnerability being exploited. That's a major misunderstanding of Android Security Bulletins and how poorly OEMs keep up with patches.
Google disclosed CVE-2025-48595 to OEMs in a security preview release near the end of September 2025. Those patches are allowed to be shipped right away, so it was included in our 2025092501 release. We noted it was already publicly fixed so it was added to our regular releases too in 2025100300.
We quickly shipped the patch after it was disclosed to OEMs by Google but we plan to do better in the future. SQLite 3.44.5 was released with this backport on 2025-07-24. We weren't previously aware SQLite maintained upstream LTS branches for Android but our plan is to closely follow those now.
In this case, Google slipped up and took 2 months to add the patch to the security preview releases. We plan to avoid that in the future by handling this ourselves because this happens too often. It's also a nice example of how Android Security Bulletins are set extremely low expectations for OEMs.
#GrapheneOS quickly ships all security preview patches. Every AOSP patch included in the Android Security Bulletins was already available in GrapheneOS for over a month. We end up shipping patches 2-3 months earlier. Google having such low expectations for OEMs and even themselves is ridiculous.
Android's security patch system doesn't make any sense and is completely at odds with how quickly people can discover and exploit vulnerabilities with the help of LLMs. The security preview release system would be far more reasonable if the embargo for sources and details was no more than 48 hours.
Google's embargo system harms security for nearly all Android users by setting the expectation of patches taking 2 to 6 months for OEMs to ship after disclosure. Patches are available to sophisticated attackers as soon as Google discloses them to OEMs. A partial embargo for months makes no sense.

2026-05-24 13:22:41 UTC

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Yep. But Telegram storing all of your group chat messages and having no end to end encryption by default is expected behavior, not your actions also being sent to some random C2 server from an unknown individual. Even nonprivate instant messengers wouldn't dare stoop so low!

2026-05-24 13:17:30 UTC

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Credits to Eric Parker for the screenshot:
https://x.com/EricParker/status/2058411298195661221

2026-05-24 13:16:21 UTC

If you downloaded Telegram from a site called APKPure recently, congrats: You downloaded an infostealer and all of your conversations were being logged to some guy's server.
https://blossom.primal.net/f85586093e58060fcfff4462cb6a35f4661b295874f8ec2704264d7c3e7108cb.jpg
C2: 38[.]190[.]225[.]166
SHA256: 7d44e0009d251ae4983f5bf29f7d8aa9af668df88dba05a17a7a314f6780ceff
https://bazaar.abuse.ch/sample/7d44e0009d251ae4983f5bf29f7d8aa9af668df88dba05a17a7a314f6780ceff

2026-05-24 12:54:48 UTC

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A managed service doesn't equal a private or secure service and it isn't trying to say that it is. The post is saying average users (normies) will often use a managed service over running their own even if the service has problems. You could put any cloud storage in that scenario.

2026-05-22 05:48:19 UTC

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It's simply part of the Android OS location service:
https://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/Geocoder
I believe most major map apps support this. Not much on our end to do.

2026-05-21 20:50:51 UTC

>Add Silent Payments (SP) receiving wallets, including support for airgapped hardware wallet signers
https://blossom.primal.net/473825056c63fb6110983a4eb61cf5fd7019239746536c992c7119dfe9710636.gif
#nevent1q…zmhf

2026-05-21 20:41:22 UTC

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There isn't a formal document on our roadmap beyond far future wishes in our FAQ but currently we're working on:
- Replacing Gallery (we're on the last steps for this)
- Overhauling SMS app (got a ton of progress for porting UI to Material 3 Compose/Kotlin but not done)
- To overhaul the contacts app and other apps
- Preparing for Android 17, which moves Desktop Mode to a production feature
A lot of accessibility stuff as well, such a improving the TTS engine, possibly SST. A lot of the work this year is to make GrapheneOS more usable and modern to prepare for the flood of Motorola users by next year.
Improving profiles is a minor feature we want to add later. The second suggestion wouldn't really be possible to meet it's goals as secondary users can't enable ADB for forensics tools that police use. You can't hide the fact you have multiple users at this time. Even the lock screen tells you.

2026-05-20 22:29:51 UTC

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We don't distribute on F-Droid, but this can be used in other operating systems. Best bet is to get the GrapheneOS App Store app so you can get automatic, verified updates for it.

2026-05-20 22:18:09 UTC

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Speech Services and Transcribro are by the same developer. Rest assured we know what we want to build next to be implemented into GrapheneOS.

2026-05-20 19:08:07 UTC

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Yes. The data is the public domain LJ Speech dataset. LJ Speech uses user-submitted public domain recordings of audiobooks. LibriVox (audiobook platform) requires all recordings made for them to be in public domain.

2026-05-20 18:45:06 UTC

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We already have forward and reverse geocoding! Check location services -> Geocoder

2026-05-20 18:32:37 UTC

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That is speech to text, not text to speech. Speech to text will be worked on in the future.

2026-05-20 18:23:03 UTC

#GrapheneOS Speech Services, a high quality on-device text to speech engine built with open source models and training data is now available in the GrapheneOS App Store.
https://blossom.primal.net/d291141699f1061444044e52af6197c24c12adc6ba01c9c9a48134897b36da81.jpg

2026-05-18 21:41:26 UTC

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The hardware acceleration works fine on GrapheneOS though, GrapheneOS just doesn't include any AI assistant/generative AI. The project just agrees that should just be left to the user. People will also just be unhappy about it even if it is totally local.

2026-05-18 21:35:14 UTC

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We haven't looked into any LLM / generative AI / agentic AI in GrapheneOS since it's not a field of ours and we try and keep the services minimal. Also it would be pretty limited in coverage if it it's own API had to be made for it because then it deviates from being an Android app.
Latest work on ML is pushing our own Text to Speech engine very soon for accessibility, entirely local, open machine learning models AND training data. Users should be excited for that.
For people into running some local LLMs, the open source and local Google AI Edge Gallery app I showed you before got a lot of changes actually. Does more than just text chat now. Someone could use it or even build a fork with it's permissive licensing.
https://blossom.primal.net/e45b4087dd1254561fb8c6f57b59f69a8fa65cacc8fb590926322cc53b56623f.jpg https://blossom.primal.net/d71bfaf20ff71a456b12985379b43bfbb6c8eb62d1c0ce6da7d18fac56be046c.jpg https://blossom.primal.net/de50d230226c6fbef44517de47b16a8294c51c3ffd3de50b8a9cfad940949b91.jpg

2026-05-18 21:20:19 UTC

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What do you mean? Like a local LLM for GrapheneOS users?

2026-05-18 21:07:58 UTC

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More thinking about projects I am close to, like GrapheneOS, which is totally not a Nostr 😓

2026-05-18 21:02:21 UTC

I think this is probably considered a hot take here but the quality of feature implementation matters far more than the implementation of a feature itself.

2026-05-17 17:17:01 UTC

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Because it's one of the only
production wallets with full send/receive, I just set up a Cake Wallet for that. The other two I know of are so new or considered Alpha software so it's more about which is least worst. I don't think you can properly decide at this point, which is why I commented more wallets should be introducing it and then it can be better decided.
If you wanted PayNyms you are also stuck on using Sparrow or Ashigaru and the latter has barely been updated.
Once Sparrow Wallet supports SP fully, I will set up my own way with that since it should also support external signers with BIP375/376. Possibly able to accept them for GrapheneOS donations like we had for PayNyms.

2026-05-17 16:19:54 UTC

I have no comment on on-chain zaps. Likely won't use them or they just go sweep to the GrapheneOS Foundation.
You can use Silent Payments for me though:
sp1qqtdguesl4e507rt9m0pwfxvwxh2wf9c74pk9v4dclnf8agxe5vwq6qml9d4h6gz0vwf3dhgvznmvpu4z0gnfr33mr5wzmlcuxpqnturehvypr803

2026-05-17 11:56:51 UTC

"Google Pixel with GrapheneOS: resistant to both BFU and AFU attacks on recent models (6[a] and newer). This is the strongest protection available on any Android device."
#nevent1q…2ez7

2026-05-17 11:51:48 UTC

Another great article by Osservatorio Nessuno explaining the tech and methods behind phone unlocking tools, notably Cellebrite used by law enforcement and governments.
https://osservatorionessuno.org/blog/2026/05/demystifying-phone-unlocking-tools-a-technical-overview/

2026-05-14 01:03:26 UTC

GrapheneOS releases for Pixel 10a are mo longer experimental. Feel free to use Pixel 10a with it.

2026-05-12 18:31:37 UTC

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We currently have access to the future security patches, not major versions. There's been a lot of changes to the AOSP development that only two major feature releases are released a year. At the moment we have been making some backports based on the Beta channels of Android.

2026-05-10 17:45:34 UTC

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Unified Attestation is another anti-competitive system being pushed by multiple European companies. It will similarly lock people out from using arbitrary hardware and software. That's not a solution and is far worse than Android's much more open hardware attestation API.
https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2033925685568250119
Android's hardware attestation shouldn't be used to lock out users not using specific hardware or OSes. However, the fact that it permits arbitrary roots of trust and OSes at least allows services to permit more. Google could use it to permit GrapheneOS for Play Integrity if that was about security.

2026-05-10 16:04:37 UTC

Apple and Google are gradually expanding their use of hardware-based attestation. They're convincing a growing number of services to adopt it. Google's Play Integrity API and Apple's App Attest API are very similar. Apple brought it to the web via Privacy Pass, which Google intends on doing too.
Google's Play Integrity API requires hardware attestation for the strong integrity level and is gradually phasing in requiring it for the more commonly used device integrity level. Apple already has it as a requirement. Over the long term, this will increasingly lock out hardware and OS competition.
The purpose of these systems is disallowing people from using hardware and software not approved by Apple or Google. This is wrongly presented as being a security feature. Banks and government services are the main ones adopting it but Apple and Google are encouraging every service to use it.
Apple's Privacy Pass brought hardware attestation to the web to help with passing captchas on their own hardware. Many people saw that as harmless since few sites would be willing to lock out non-Apple-hardware users. Apple and Google are both likely to bring broader hardware attestation to the web.
Google's reCAPTCHA is planning an approach where they use Privacy Pass on Apple hardware, their own approach on Google Mobile Services Android devices and a QR code scanning system to require an iOS or Google certified Android device for Windows and other systems:
https://support.google.com/recaptcha/answer/16609652
Banking and government services increasingly require using a mobile app where they can use attestation to force using an Apple or Google approved device and OS. Apple's privacy pass, Google's 'cancelled' Web Environment Integrity and now reCAPTCHA Mobile Verification are bringing this to the web.
Current media coverage for reCAPTCHA Mobile Verification misunderstands it and the impact of it. They're bringing a hardware attestation requirement to Windows, desktop Linux, OpenBSD, etc. by requiring a QR scan from a certified smartphone to pass reCAPTCHA in some cases. They could expand it more.
Control over reCAPTCHA puts Google in a position where they can require having either iOS or a certified Android device to use an enormous amount of the web. Google defines certification requirements for Android which includes forcing bundling Google Chrome, etc. It's enormously anti-competitive.
Google's Play Integrity API bans using GrapheneOS despite it being far more secure than anything they permit. It also bans using any other alternative. This isn't somehow specific to an AOSP-based OS. You can't avoid this by using a mobile OS based on Linux or FreeBSD instead. You'll just be more locked out.
Google's Play Integrity API permits devices with no security patches for 10 years. The device integrity level can be bypassed via spoofing but they can detect it quite well and block it once it starts being done at scale. The strong integrity level requires leaked keys from TEEs/SEs to bypass it.
It doesn't provide a useful security feature, but it does lock out competition very well. Services requiring Apple App Attest or Google Play Integrity are primarily helping to lock in Apple and Google having a duopoly for mobile devices. Play Integrity is more relevant due to AOSP being open source.
Governments are increasingly mandating using Apple's App Attest and Google's Play Integrity for not only their own services but also commercial services. The EU is leading the charge of making these requirements for digital payments, ID, age verification, etc. Many EU government apps require them.
Instead of governments stopping Apple and Google from engaging in egregiously anti-competitive behavior, they're directly participating in locking out competition via their own services. Requiring people to have an Apple device or Google-certified Android device is anti-competition, not security.
reCAPTCHA Mobile Verification will currently work with sandboxed Google Play on GrapheneOS but it clearly exists to provide a way for them to start using hardware attestation on systems without it. People without an iOS or Android device will be locked out when this is required even without that.
This isn't about security or any missing functionality. GrapheneOS can be verified via hardware attestation. Google bans using GrapheneOS for Play Integrity because we don't license Google Mobile Services and conform to anti-competitive rules already found to be illegal in South Korea and elsewhere.

2026-05-10 11:21:07 UTC

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We officially announced it was Motorola Mobility, the Lenovo brand.

2026-05-10 00:40:14 UTC

This week, we patched a VPN leak in Android that was reported to Google but was ignored. Here is some coverage about that:
https://cyberinsider.com/grapheneos-fixes-android-vpn-leak-google-refused-to-patch
Here is the original vulnerability report:
https://lowlevel.fun/posts/tiny-udp-cannon-android-vpn-bypass/

2026-05-08 06:30:38 UTC

GrapheneOS isn't vulnerable to the 3 recently disclosed Linux kernel vulnerabilities named Copy Fail, Copy Fail 2 and Dirty Frag. Current Android Open Source Project SELinux policies block exploiting all 3 bugs. Standard AOSP GKI kernel configuration also has 2/3 of the vulnerable features disabled.
Attack surface reduction via fine-grained SELinux policy rules and stripping out unused kernel features via kernel configuration goes a long way to protecting against vulnerabilities. There's also seccomp-bpf for various standard sandboxes but most of the attack surface reduction is via SELinux.
AOSP uses SELinux to allowlist ioctl commands for drivers, permitted socket types, etc. in a fine-grained way. It strictly controls a lot of functionality prone to vulnerabilities including user namespaces and io_uring which aren't allowed to be used by apps or nearly any of the base OS processes.
These kinds of issues are rare and attack surface reduction is the best way to defend against them. #GrapheneOS does additional kernel attack surface reduction but in these 3 cases it's enough to have modern AOSP GKI kernel and SELinux policies. We also greatly improve generic exploit protections.
Local privilege escalation vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel are very common. However, the vast majority are memory corruption bugs rather than these memory-related logic errors. We defend against the memory corruption bugs with hardware memory tagging, zero-on-free and similar generic defenses.
Linux has a massive amount of code for the core kernel and drivers for the hardware. All of the code runs with full privileges with no isolation. In a microkernel, each of these 3 recent vulnerabilities would have been in isolated processes. Virtualization will have a major role in addressing this.
Despite these not being traditional memory corruption, a memory safe language with a better type system would definitely help. Containing low-level handling of memory to a much smaller portion of the kernel and mostly using safe abstractions for networking, device drivers, etc. would help a lot.
Linux has a relentless flood of severe memory corruption bugs being discovered. Nearly all exploit chains for Linux-based systems by commercial and government exploit developers use Linux kernel memory corruption bugs. It's a lot harder to make very portable and reliable exploits for those bugs.
A lot can be done to further reduce Linux kernel attack surface in GrapheneOS and much better generic memory corruption exploit protections can also be developed. However, it clearly needs to be replaced. Hardware-based virtualization on smartphones keeps getting better and has a major role to play.

2026-05-05 19:01:49 UTC

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For the future, yes.
Work currently is being done on Messaging, Contacts (to be completely redone from their AOSP base) and Gallery (fork)

2026-05-05 18:48:57 UTC

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Update with a fix for this is now live in Alpha.

2026-05-05 18:47:17 UTC

#GrapheneOS version 2026050400 released.
This update implements a fix for a UDP VPN leak that Google did not choose to fix, support for lock screen widgets, and the latest security patch level.
• full 2026-05-01 security patch level
• disable registerQuicConnectionClosePayload optimization to fix VPN leak
• Sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer: add shim for BluetoothAdapter ACTION_REQUEST_ENABLE
• apply active Dynamic Code Loading restrictions for Java inside isolated processes
• add app API for checking Dynamic Code Loading restriction states
• fully enable lockscreen widget support by default to avoid the swipe gesture being missing for the Pixel 10a and the whole feature being missing for the emulator
• enable standard secure NFC mode by default which can be changed via Settings > Connected devices > Connection preferences > NFC > Require device unlock for NFC (note this only disables card emulation while locked rather than all uses of NFC)
• backport upstream fix for getBubblePackageForLogging() crash
• kernel (6.1): update to latest GKI LTS branch revision including update to 6.1.170
• kernel (6.6): update to latest GKI LTS branch revision including update to 6.6.130
• kernel (6.12): update to latest GKI LTS branch revision
• hardened_malloc: fix slightly non-uniform distribute of random u16 values used for randomizing slot selection, slab allocation quarantining and free slab quarantining
• hardened_malloc: improve the robustness of disabling memory tagging against theoretical issues by making it fork-safe and adding more synchronization to avoid technically undefined parallel reads of the memory tagging state
• hardened_malloc: improve handling of out-of-memory edge cases
• hardened_malloc: improve sized deallocation hardening
• libpng: backport fix for CVE-2026-33636
• App Store: update to version 36
• Vanadium: update to version 147.0.7727.111.0
• Vanadium: update to version 148.0.7778.49.0
• Vanadium: update to version 148.0.7778.60.0
• Vanadium: update to version 148.0.7778.60.1
• Vanadium: update to version 148.0.7778.96.0
• adevtool: add update-gservices-flag command for fetching gservices flags
All of the Android 16 security patches from the current June 2026, July 2026, August 2026, September 2026, October 2026 and November 2026 Android Security Bulletins are included in the 2026050401 security preview release. List of additional fixed CVEs:
• Critical: CVE-2026-0039, CVE-2026-0040, CVE-2026-0041, CVE-2026-0042, CVE-2026-0043, CVE-2026-0044, CVE-2026-0051, CVE-2026-0052, CVE-2026-0080, CVE-2026-0097, CVE-2026-21352, CVE-2026-21353, CVE-2026-27280, CVE-2026-28590, CVE-2026-28591
• High: CVE-2025-22424, CVE-2025-22426, CVE-2025-48600, CVE-2025-48612, CVE-2026-0008, CVE-2026-0016, CVE-2026-0036, CVE-2026-0048, CVE-2026-0050, CVE-2026-0053, CVE-2026-0054, CVE-2026-0055, CVE-2026-0056, CVE-2026-0059, CVE-2026-0060, CVE-2026-0061, CVE-2026-0062, CVE-2026-0063, CVE-2026-0065, CVE-2026-0067, CVE-2026-0070, CVE-2026-0074, CVE-2026-0075, CVE-2026-0076, CVE-2026-0077, CVE-2026-0078, CVE-2026-0079, CVE-2026-0084, CVE-2026-0085, CVE-2026-0086, CVE-2026-0087, CVE-2026-0088, CVE-2026-0089, CVE-2026-0091, CVE-2026-0093, CVE-2026-0094, CVE-2026-0095, CVE-2026-0096, CVE-2026-0098, CVE-2026-0099, CVE-2026-0100, CVE-2026-28572, CVE-2026-28574, CVE-2026-28577, CVE-2026-28578, CVE-2026-28580, CVE-2026-28581, CVE-2026-28582, CVE-2026-28583, CVE-2026-28585, CVE-2026-28586, CVE-2026-28588, CVE-2026-28594, CVE-2026-28596, CVE-2026-28602
https://grapheneos.org/releases#2026050400

2026-05-04 22:40:26 UTC

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Yes
https://blossom.primal.net/6199a1ae40f65eb21fe666516b3a33939c93b39e6c581836f8e49acb76b96646.jpg

2026-05-04 19:57:32 UTC

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We are releasing an update today to fix this leak.

2026-05-04 19:54:32 UTC

The #GrapheneOS Gallery app is going to be replaced with a fork of ReFra. Here is how the app looks. It is far more complete and full of features than the original AOSP Gallery. I am sure you will like it.
https://blossom.primal.net/fff593a72e79f93448fe238f510479c1c15c8772515102b7a7870e5cf196684a.jpg
https://blossom.primal.net/52abbf4c8bfd07350448fbc3b728029b19369a754f2db2ec1e980d1093ac163c.jpg

2026-05-04 19:25:02 UTC

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Reading the post, it looks like this leak was reported upstream into AOSP and was just ignored by them outright. What a mess.
We'll look into producing a fix for this ourselves and forward to the right people since they won't. If the researchers themselves also sent these things to us we could work on fixing them sooner.
Fortunately a native app needs to go out of their way to be designed to do this and certainly no app beyond this PoC is doing it right now.

2026-04-26 00:29:05 UTC

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It is very real! Put a link to one race in my comment above. Also @bitcoin_racing on (not) nostr.
https://blossom.primal.net/6f1316eb1d59db7a80ec5a34af08272788d0979354c523099307f75d930bd8eb.jpg

2026-04-26 00:12:55 UTC

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This looks awesome!

2026-04-26 00:09:58 UTC

Bitcoin Racing x GrapheneOS.
https://blossom.primal.net/5c77c5f8925a228a4ab52a973ae5aa75c9b5fb3cb2a68b2c4765ab406022e25b.png

2026-04-18 07:47:07 UTC

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Not right now. The system apps handle many OS/app intents, like camera, contact management, webview and file management.

2026-04-18 07:44:42 UTC

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GrapheneOS doesn't persistently store notifications unless users explicitly enable notification history. For users enabling notification history, it's a 24 hour log that's cleared as soon as the feature is disabled again. This is the standard Android Open Source Project approach.
#nevent1q…mu5c

2026-04-15 19:18:45 UTC

Privacy and security on computing devices need to become far stronger to protect people from pervasive violations of their rights. Users have their privacy pervasively violated by corporations, criminals and governments. There are endless privacy and security weaknesses in software with exploits of those happening on a large scale. Operating systems, browsers and other apps need to do a much better job protecting users. Enormous progress is needed on both privacy and security.
#GrapheneOS provides a massive upgrade for privacy and security over the standard Android Open Source Project. GrapheneOS is nowhere near good enough and we have an enormous amount of work to do improving both. Our work is an ongoing process and doesn't have an end point. Privacy and security heavily involve competition between attackers and defenders. Most defenders are making little progress and falling increasingly far behind.
Attackers continue improving their exploits of privacy and security weaknesses. Commercial exploit tools are increasingly widely deployed for broad attacks. Software has a very high density of privacy and security vulnerabilities. LLMs are accelerating both vulnerability discovery and exploit development. For most computing devices, defense is increasingly far behind offense. iOS and GrapheneOS are exceptional cases not representative of degrading privacy and security across computing devices.
Growing numbers of internet connected devices are incorporated into botnets. This harms the privacy and security of the internet as a whole through heavily pushing it towards centralization behind services such as Cloudflare. Insecure devices without security patches harm the internet as a whole. It isn't only embedded devices but also desktops, mobile devices and servers being used as part of these botnets. It isn't only people with these insecure devices who are harmed. It can get much worse.
We're building GrapheneOS to protect everyone's privacy and security. It's aimed at widespread adoption and is highly usable. It's compatible with the vast majority of Android apps. It has major privacy benefits for every user including stopping a lot of data collection by apps and services with a better permission model increasingly addressing being coerced to grant access. GrapheneOS has many users with little technical knowledge and isn't hard to install or use.
We're continuing to work on improving privacy, security, usability and app compatibility for all of our users. Contact Scopes, Storage Scopes, per-app Sensors toggle, VPN leak protection and many other features we provde are very important privacy protections. We're building alternatives to the Camera, Microphone and other permissions too. Our major improvements to exploit protections are there to protect user privacy. Privacy depends on security and that's why we heavily work on security too.
Contrary to what's often claimed, GrapheneOS is far more usable and requires far less sacrifice compared to other alternatives. Providing far better protection against sophisticated exploits isn't at the expense of that. Our opt-in sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer combines privacy and high usability. We're gradually making replacements for more Google services apps rely on. Location services, network-based location, geocoding and more has already been replaced and much more is coming.

2026-04-10 16:17:55 UTC

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We are replacing the Gallery app and this will have that kind of UI.

2026-04-09 21:56:33 UTC

The alignment on the app drawer is fixed now.
https://blossom.primal.net/708e1d9d1933708aebdc37d1e6752f7298f35b75df4f62bfc355104d0640fdd8.jpg

2026-04-06 22:07:24 UTC

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Too many apps on Android get away with doing bare minimum of having just an app on the phone. Support for tablets, desktop mode, widgets, and no dependency on Play services should be encouraged more.

2026-04-06 21:42:29 UTC

We need more apps with widgets. Can't make my home screen look good...

2026-04-06 12:55:09 UTC

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It's an AOSP distribution like Android, but I guess for sake of where this is posted I can see why this is separate. Great to see so many people using it.

2026-04-06 12:52:12 UTC

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Where have you seen this? We have the build instructions here at https://grapheneos.org/build

2026-04-06 10:17:04 UTC

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Use what you want, but I really can't recommend Telegram in general when it comes to stuff like this.

2026-04-05 21:06:57 UTC

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As far as I know it's not released there. Additionally not every app on F-Droid is reproducible. For the most part F-Droid are simply compiling apps from source and signing it with their own keys.

2026-04-05 13:16:25 UTC

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The source code does not match the compiled binary they distribute. There is only blank example code with the bot IDs empty, while the compiled binary had it configured.

2026-04-05 11:26:29 UTC

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Use the Telegram official app if you use Telegram. You're using Telegram anyway. There's not really a "hardened" alternative I recommend like Molly for Signal.

2026-04-05 10:39:57 UTC

(updated post) The Nekogram telegram client contains code that grabs your Telegram ID and phone number to send to their own bots, also some other OSINT bots mentioned. They admitted to it in their channel (@NekoUpdates) and are insulting users in the comments. Assume your number and user can be correlated at a worst case. Keep away from third party clients.
https://github.com/Nekogram/Nekogram/issues/336
https://github.com/RomashkaTea/nekogram-proof-of-logging

2026-03-27 20:39:05 UTC

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We are an AOSP distribution because of all the security properties it already comes with like the mandatory sandboxing of apps, permission controls, file-based disk encryption, verified boot and more. It compliments what we want out of GrapheneOS. It's an entirely reproducible free and open source project. We don't want to make an operating system using the traditional desktop Linux OS stack which sets us back on all of these things.
There's a lot of things we are against when it comes to big companies like Google but we aren't forcing people to see black and white. A lot of things of AOSP and Pixels we like, but we don't want Google to be the only company producing those things either. We don't call ourselves a degoogling project because people can use what they want on GrapheneOS. Influencing you to create an opposition is politician behavior.

2026-03-27 07:32:13 UTC

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The CIA could definitely hire anyone from any country they wanted to lol. Devs aren't able to commit their own code to our repos regardless and it must be peer reviewed through PRs anyone can see.

2026-03-26 08:11:57 UTC

BTW, we don't have to pay you in fiat.
#nevent1q…tgwe

2026-03-25 21:32:07 UTC

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More things like Messaging, Keyboard, Gallery, Dialer, the prebuilt apps. Terminal is something we can look at as well but there's a lot of user experience improvements we want to make with the everyday apps.

2026-03-25 19:38:40 UTC

We are hiring Android app software engineers to develop and take ownership of maintaining new #GrapheneOS default applications. This is a fully remote, worldwide position.
If you have experience in Kotlin, Jetpack Compose and shipping production Android applications with commitment to security and privacy principles, come help fruit the next chapters of GrapheneOS.
Apply:
https://grapheneos.org/hiring#android-apps-software-engineer

2026-03-21 14:07:00 UTC

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Those are for project account pages. There is no project page for GrapheneOS. I'm just one guy.
Updating GrapheneOS can be done via Settings app but it is usually done seamlessly and in the background. You'll receive a notification once it's installed requesting to restart. For most people it restarts on its own overnight.

2026-03-20 23:06:36 UTC

Pixel 10a users can now try out our experimental release of #GrapheneOS. Help us fix any potential regressions for a stable release!
#nevent1q…jppy

2026-03-20 20:57:36 UTC

#GrapheneOS version 2026032000 released. This release introduces experimental support for the Pixel 10a.
- add experimental Pixel 10a support
- Launcher: change app drawer search bar to cancelling search when the back action is invoked instead of the query becoming empty
- backport SELinux policy for CameraX extensions property used by the Pixel Camera HAL from Android 16 QPR3
- hardened_malloc: multiple small optimizations to improve performance
- kernel (6.1): update to latest GKI LTS branch revision including update to 6.1.166
- kernel (6.6): update to latest GKI LTS branch revision including update to 6.6.127
- kernel (6.12): update to latest GKI LTS branch revision including update to 6.12.76
- Vanadium: update to version 146.0.7680.153.0
- adevtool: add support for keeping only certain unpacked images to help with constrained storage
- switch to cross-device gmscompat_lib key for 10th gen Pixels
- Auditor: update to version 91
All of the Android 16 security patches from the current April 2026, May 2026, June 2026, July 2026 and August 2026 Android Security Bulletins are included in the 2026032001 security preview release.
List of additional fixed CVEs:
Critical: CVE-2026-0039, CVE-2026-0040, CVE-2026-0041, CVE-2026-0042, CVE-2026-0043, CVE-2026-0044, CVE-2026-0049, CVE-2026-0052, CVE-2026-0073, CVE-2026-0080
High: CVE-2025-22424, CVE-2025-22426, CVE-2025-48600, CVE-2025-48612, CVE-2026-0016, CVE-2026-0036, CVE-2026-0048, CVE-2026-0050, CVE-2026-0053, CVE-2026-0054, CVE-2026-0055, CVE-2026-0056, CVE-2026-0059, CVE-2026-0060, CVE-2026-0061, CVE-2026-0062, CVE-2026-0063, CVE-2026-0065, CVE-2026-0067, CVE-2026-0070, CVE-2026-0074, CVE-2026-0075, CVE-2026-0076, CVE-2026-0077, CVE-2026-0078, CVE-2026-0079
https://grapheneos.org/releases#2026032000

2026-03-20 20:47:30 UTC

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This is not LineageOS but MicroG's distribution of it. A confusing name.

2026-03-20 18:58:19 UTC

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We're yet to see this implemented in AOSP. We won't be adding sideloading restrictions.

2026-03-20 12:26:16 UTC

GrapheneOS will remain usable by anyone around the world without requiring personal information, identification or an account. GrapheneOS and our online services will remain available internationally. If GrapheneOS devices can't be sold in a region due to their regulations, so be it.

2026-03-07 17:24:39 UTC

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McDonalds when they are requiring strict device integrity and OS enforcement they can be 100.00% sure that I like burgers
https://blossom.primal.net/784ae564927621a16743a487ef2fff4407b727e3680e824545691ecbed48abab.jpg

2026-03-07 17:21:52 UTC

The official microG OS project (https://lineage.microg.org) leaked their private keys for logging into their servers and signing releases:
https://github.com/lineageos4microg/l4m-wiki/wiki/December-2025-security-issues
We make our official builds on local machines. Our signing machine's keys aren't ever on any storage unencrypted.
Our roadmap for improving security of verifying updates is based on taking advantage of the reproducible builds. We plan to have multiple official build locations and a configurable signoff verification system in the update clients also usable with third party signoff providers.
We don't have faith in any available commercial HSM products being more secure than keeping keys encrypted at rest on the primary local build machine. Instead, we're planning to develop software for using the secure element on #GrapheneOS phones as an HSM for signing our releases.

2026-03-07 02:19:35 UTC

Proton on the news, again!? So let's bring it back!
#nevent1q…tkkc

2026-03-05 23:29:26 UTC

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No future devices based on current ones looking at as targets appear to be that small. Closest is the Motorola Signature which is 6.8, assuming the next gen successor is the same size as the Signature. The razr ultra is a little slimmer but 7 inches, but folds.

2026-03-05 23:25:35 UTC

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The device / OS pair is certified. It has some requirements that if the OEM follows them they are able to be certified. For example, Google services available, many as privileged components. While we have sandboxed Google Play that is still not sufficient. Some users don't have a play services implementation at all.
So while some OEMs make awfully changed Android releases, ours is left in the dirt there. We don't try for Google certifications.

2026-03-05 23:20:00 UTC

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Imagine it is too late. Will be using the Qualcomm SOC secure element. OpenTitan also isn't built for Android (Titan M2 is based off of this), so there would have to be someone willing to manufacture secure elements and support the Android APIs, etc.
Regardless this article is seriously great news.

2026-03-05 08:40:53 UTC

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I'm far from a bitcoiner... Strongly dislike maxi groupthink. That post is about funds being moved out of bitcoin and into monero. My following list is mostly devs or xmr. Not sure how praising an availability of a service to offload received funds into xmr is giving up ideals... unless the ideal was being bitcoin only or something? I think people can use what they want.
A ton of privacy features for on-chain bitcoin like Silent Payments are just under adopted (most are just users of one wallet that is on a smartphone) that recieving LN and ramping out into Monero is a much more likely outcome. You're likely to get an LN or XMR address to send/receive to a merchant than a SP address today. Hope it changes.
Nostr users are there because it is almost entirely centred around Lightning. The best clients for it are too. Monero oriented clients are often weird forks or too new to recommend anywhere for my taste. I'm pretty strict on keeping away from software that is new or experimental.
I do want to see improvements on more wallets adopting SPs (big fan of Sparrow) and Nostr clients outside of bitcoinery though

2026-03-05 08:08:26 UTC

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Obviously they'd avoid using a different currency to transact as much as possible.