A 0-click exploit chain for the Pixel 10

I followed the link to the Pixel 9 bug/exploit and saw this:

"Over the past few years, several AI-powered features have been added to mobile phones that allow users to better search and understand their messages. One effect of this change is increased 0-click attack surface, as efficient analysis often requires message media to be decoded before the message is opened by the user"

Haven't we learned our lesson on this? Don't read and act on my sms messages without me asking you to!

"This is notably fast given that this is the first time that an Android driver bug I reported was patched within 90 days of the vendor first learning about the vulnerability."

This makes me feel better about Google, but also makes me kind of frightened of the rest of Android. I wonder what Apple's response time is?

Semi-related: has the rate of published exploits picked up as if late, or is it simply the fact that there’s hype around ai as security tool (offense or defense) so it’s simply in the news more often?

Feels like there’s something new every other day - linux, windows, mobile, various commonplace tools used by everybody, the list goes on

Hmmm... I'd like someone to double check my thinking here. I posted this exact prompt for gpt 5.5 xhigh:

```

does this look right to you? don't do any searches or check memory, just think through first principles

static int vpu_mmap(struct file fp, struct vm_area_struct vm) { unsigned long pfn; struct vpu_core core = container_of(fp->f_inode->i_cdev, struct vpu_core, cdev); vm_flags_set(vm, VM_IO | VM_DONTEXPAND | VM_DONTDUMP); / This is a CSRs mapping, use pgprot_device */ vm->vm_page_prot = pgprot_device(vm->vm_page_prot); pfn = core->paddr >> PAGE_SHIFT; return remap_pfn_range(vm, vm->vm_start, pfn, vm->vm_end-vm->vm_start, vm->vm_page_prot) ? -EAGAIN : 0; }

```

And it correctly identified the issue at hand, without web searches. I'd love to try something more comprehensive, e.g. shoving whole chunks of the codebase into the prompt instead of just the specific function, but it seems the latent ability to catch security exploits is there.

So then.... I wonder how this got out in the first place. I know I'm using a toy example but would love to learn more!

Where are the iPhone jailbreaks didn’t see anything since a long time.. what’s happening? Did I miss them or isn’t anything available? I mean props to Apple however they do it but is it a matter of time in regard to the current timeline or what is actually going on?

Do we have any evidence on how AI has affected NSO et als’ businesses? Does it render them obsolete? Or are they now superpowered?

This is a great bug report! I am not a kernel expert by any means even though I have read some about it... 10+ years ago. And I was able to follow along and see what was going on.

It does make me scared for what other dangers lurk since this was a really bad one and it was so little work to find.

Also of note: so many security issues lately have been done using AI. This report makes me think two things:

1. Expertise is still immensely valuable, the more niche, the more valuable.

2. There are lots of niches still where AI doesn't dominate...

> This is rendered even easier by the fact that the kernel is always at the same physical address on Pixel

OpenBSD fixed this back in 2017.

There have been some V4L2 enhancements to support hardware video decoding pending a merge for a long time, they do seem to be in the mainline kernel now, I guess people didn't want to wait that long.

Project Zero has to report bugs to Android through the front door, and deal with Android VRP severity classification? I always assumed they could just walk over to the Android office and advocate for their bugs, face to face.

hm. surprised there aren't idioms like copy_(to|from)_user for these kinds of kernel to userspace mappings for custom device nodes that ensure bounds are supplied...

fascinating how GrapheneOS achieves high security level on the same hardware where Google failed to even randomize android's kernel location

And that is against a device whose BSP is actually open source and available for research!

Now imagine the dark horrors hiding in the BSPs of other Android devices... or embedded devices in general.

Frankly, it should be a requirement of Google's certification process that everything regarding drivers gets upstreamed into the Linux kernel. Yes, even if this adds quite a time delay to the usual hardware development process.

I hope the average person will soon understand the importance of security and will be OK with making the necessary sacrifices to achieve it. Almost everyone has something to protect, be it personal information or property (money, IP).

People love new technologies and features that make their lives easier, but so far only a small subset of these people have made a conscious decision to limit their exposure to risk by depriving themselves of benefits provided by some of these features.

It sure is wonderful to have your whole life digitized on a single computer. You can analyze, share, organize, gamify, record and so on every aspect of your life instantly and effortlessly. It's incredible, really. Technology is amazing. Expect for the pesky bad actors that can do the digital equivalent to most physical crime from the other side of the world anonymously without you noticing.

It's like germs - if you don't wash your hands after touching something questionable and you don't experience any negative consequences, you'll learn not to wash them most of the time. It's just a waste of time. Maybe if you've touched something really gross, you'd wash them, but that would be the exception. Security is the same. If you've been using computers the same way for years, you'll learn nothing bad happens so why bother having a hygiene, why bother making any tradeoffs?

Yes, you've heard the news of someone's nudes posted online, of someone's bank account drained or of some company's files ransomed, but you've also heard of something dying from a brain parasite after touching a muddy puddle and rubbing their eyes afterwards. That happens rarely, we shouldn't worry about it. A car can hit you when you cross the street, a lightning can strike you when you're just walking about, an aneurysm can end you at anytime. No one is washing their hands all the time or constantly trying to minimize the streets they cross or anything like that. That would be foolish and impractical, and I agree.

That mindset is carried over to digital security, sadly. The risks are higher, the effort to keep a good hygiene is lower, the ability for bad actors to completely fuck you is much greater than in meat space. The rewards are seemingly greater, too, until we realize that what we get from technology is just marginally better than what we get without it. Tech is amazing, but it doesn't make us transcend time and space. It let's us organize our schedule, tag people and places in photos and summarize chats. All of that is born out of meat space. Without tech we'd still have conversation, we'd still see new places, we'd still have calendars and todo lists. We get maybe 1% more than we would have if we didn't have any tech but we let all our information and property sit unsecured for that 1% gain. That's fucked up, because the risks are big and will get bigger. And the tradeoffs we have to make to secure our digital lives may seem annoying, but are actually quite trivial. Less unnecessary sharing, more isolation and compartmentalization, different computers for different tasks, less proprietary hardware and software, etc.. We could get 90% of that 1% benefit from tech if we spend just a bit of time and energy of securing out digital lives. But fuck it. Let's but the latest flagship, let's use it for ID, banking, communication, file storage, camera, health tracking, everything. Because it's a tiny bit more inconvenient to get multiple computers for different purposes, to not get the latest and newest, to not install a bunch of unnecessary shit, to be careful about the digital realm at all.

Not really on topic, but a rant. I'm tired of people (friends and friends of friends) complaining to me that they got majorly fucked one way or another and acting like the universe owes them not to get fucked while they buy a computer that exposes their asshole to the world.

I read about Pixel 9 Dolby Decoder bug, and it is based on integer overflow. It was a mistake to allow "+" operator to overflow, and this must be fixed in new languages like Rust, but it is not.