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Comment by microtonal | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

AFAIK iPhones in lockdown mode are meant when comparing iPhone to 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.

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!!

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.

Not worthwhile or feasible. The OS is not designed to hide its identity.

Google is never going to put their administrative access in a restricted sandbox.

That is diametrically opposed to their interests in data collection.

They'd also have to update all their phone spec sheets -- not having the sandbox doubled graphene's battery life on my Pixel 6 Pro (in practice and vs. advertised specs).

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