Google explains how to protect firmware on Android devices

Your smartphone contains a lot of important data, and Google wants to help keep it safe.

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Our smartphones are the focus of much of our lives. We communicate with loved ones, plan our days, and organize our finances through them. They are the perfect attack vector for someone who might want to target you or steal from you, which is why so much effort goes into securing them. Google has now detailed how to secure the Android platform not only with Android itself but how to protect against attacks on the firmware of other microprocessors running as part of your SoC.


Google has focused on trying to prevent attacks on the Application Processor (AP) when it does things like creating compiler-dependent mitigations in Android. The company announced that it is now working with “ecosystem partners” in several areas with the goal of enhancing the security of firmware that interacts with Android. They are exploring compiler-based disinfectants such as bound And person, along with other breakout thinning agents as well. The company is also looking into additional memory security features, which we learned may come with Android 14.

Google improved security in Android 12 and Android 13 by introducing native Rust support for secure memory units, and Android 13 is the first version of Android to contain the majority of new code written in Rust. It is difficult to create mitigations of exploits for processors running much smaller firmware than can be implemented on the access point, and any built mitigations may negatively affect performance.

Along with the launch of Android 13, Google has updated the Severity guidelines To further shed light on bugs that can be remotely exploited in the connection’s firmware. The company also accepts and rewards external contributions through Double rewards program. This helps motivate security researchers to identify critical bugs and report them to Google. Which then improves the security of the platform as a whole. It is important to protect not only the operating system running on the AP but other, smaller firmware running on other parts of the SoC.

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