In regards to your first link, the quote "'It’s concerning – and sends the message that [GrapheneOS] is criminal by default,' said Christophe Boutry, a cybersecurity and surveillance expert." really is leading language. It's stating that protection is criminal and that vulnerability is law-abiding.
This is why it is important to continue iterating everywhere that device security is important for everyone. iPhone has nearly the same level of protection and we also do not see it as 'criminal by default'.
Secondly, it is important to get as many people to use GrapheneOS as possible, including non-tech people. The more widespread it becomes, the harder it will become to paint this picture.
GrapheneOS is good enough to have an entire column dedicated to it in Cellebrite's support matrix, and if I remember correctly the device could break into iPhones but not phones running GrapheneOS.
I'm not sure that I agree that iOS devices have equal protection.
The recent Darksword exploit should give everyone pause in asserting that iOS is secure:
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/mobile/2026/03/a-darksword...
I trust iOS with my banking and financial apps in a way that I would never trust Google, but I am under no illusion that any architecture can be completely secure.
On the Linux side, I have found SELinux maddening at times in forcing me to the syslog to enable and permit what I need the machine to do.
I have never seen anything this obstreperous in a BSD, but perhaps I have not looked with sufficient depth.
In any case, the Trust / SELinux / Enforcing status is a sizable advantage against iOS.
sounds to me like iphone isnt actually that safe otherwise it wouldnt make sense. maybe we are missing some critical information
GrapheneOS seems to be consistently the hardest to exploit AFU based on various Cellubrite leaks. iPhones have better protection than all other Androids except Pixels.
I might be wrong, but I get the impression that the GrapheneOS folks generally recommend GrapheneOS > iOS > Pixel >> everything else.
It might have to do with e.g. Apple having rolled out MIE at a broader scale than Google rolling out MTE on PixelOS, where AFAIK it is still largely opt-in (not 100% sure, I always wipe a Pixel immediately).
Agree. I didn't mean to say stock pixels are better than iPhones.
Correct, they have a hard on for that garbage.
IIRC it was the only one that Cellebrite couldn't break, but this was based on quite old news.
There are more recent leaks. The last release of GrapheneOS they've been able to exploit on locked device is still from 2022 as of a couple months ago. They take longer to break into iPhones than stock Pixels but that may largely be due to Google giving much earlier access for public testing. They have a far shorter window to prepare for a new iOS release before it's in production as a regular update for users.
> The last release of GrapheneOS they've been able to exploit on locked device is still from 2022 as of a couple months ago.
That's impressive!!
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Perhaps the fact that iPhones are run by a multi trillion dollar company while GrapheneOS is an open source project with less employees than an Apple store has something to do with NATO approval. They are not going to approve a device that people have to install the OS themselves. I would base the security of an OS based on expert security researchers, not certain government agencies decisions.
iPhones are probably the most secure off the shelf phones you can buy, but based on leaked documents it's clearly inferior real-world security compared to a Pixel running GrapheneOS. Apple and Google have copied many security features from GrapheneOS like the reboot timer.
GrapheneOS is built from the ground up with a primary priority placed on security. GrapheneOS has much more robust USB port hardening. You can see the full list of features added on their website. Apple bolts on some additional security features in lockdown mode but they are mostly fixes to Apple's services which have large attack surface like iMessage. Additionally they are all built together and not on by default which makes the users willing to use it way lower.
Any independent reasons for your claim besides appeal to authority?
Apple can at any time push a hostile "upgrade" that will remove or disable the claimed security features. You don't control the operating system, and can't trust that it isn't backdoored, especially given Apple's record[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
> The iPhone
Probably the latest models. Cop told me they have problems cracking those. Older models not so much, that's pretty common knowledge.
Is this because of vulnerabilities baked in the HW (or bootROM or any other unpatchable area)? What’s the situation on older Pixels? Are they generally safer than an iPhone for HW issues? It’s expected that given a few years some vulnerabilities will crop up for most hardware.
So then the best chance for security is to stay up to date with everything, including the latest HW model. At least this gives an attacker a window of only ~1 year to find and exploit a vulnerability.
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Source: I made it up
Perhaps GrapheneOS should just be an ASOP release with implicit security features that makes it hard to notice it is anything different. If people think it is a vanilla Android install, it would give them no reason to imply criminal activity.
Google is never going to put their administrative access in a restricted sandbox.
That is diametrically opposed to their interests in data collection.
Not worthwhile or feasible. The OS is not designed to hide its identity.
He’s a “surveillance expert” so the language is not at all surprising. These are the people who always bring up the appeal to emotion, associating a benign act with something unpalatable, criminal, terrorist, think of the children.
When your job depends on not understanding and all that.
I'm fairly certain the person being quoted is saying the opposite of what you've implied - i.e. he thinks it is concerning THAT GrapheneOS is automatically associated with criminality.
You’re right, I misinterpreted but now that you mention it it’s like those ambiguous figure images, irreversibly collapsed on the proper interpretation. In this case I can only assume my interpretation of “surveillance expert” is also completely off. Can’t edit, flag away.