Motorola, GrapheneOS Team Up for Secure Smartphones

Motorola has announced a long-term collaboration with the GrapheneOS project, known for developing secure free firmware based on Android. The partnership aims to improve smartphone privacy and security, as well as introduce new devices with official support for GrapheneOS-based firmware.

This collaboration will drive the development of next-generation privacy and security technologies by leveraging the expertise of GrapheneOS, Motorola’s extensive security background, and insights from real users. The partnership will also incorporate solutions from ThinkShield, a security platform from Lenovo, which acquired Motorola in 2014.

GrapheneOS is known for its fork of the AOSP codebase (Android Open Source Project) that includes experimental technologies to enhance application isolation, access control, and vulnerability prevention. The platform utilizes features like a modified version of libc with memory corruption protection and custom implementations for enhancing process address space division.

Notably, GrapheneOS empowers users to selectively manage application permissions for network access, sensors, and hardware identifiers. The platform restricts access to sensitive data such as IMEI and MAC addresses by default, and includes measures to safeguard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-related activities.

Furthermore, GrapheneOS implements cryptographic boot component verification and encrypts data at the file system level, providing enhanced security for system partitions and user profiles. Users have the option to set additional security measures, including a destructive password and PIN code for wiping encryption keys securely.