Unlocking the Pixel 9 bootloader breaks some Pixel AI apps

https://liliputing.com/unlocking-the-pixel-9-bootloader-breaks-some-pixel-ai-apps/

by edward • 2 years ago

91 81 2 years ago

liliputing.com

glitchc3• 2 years ago

Does it start working again if you re-lock the bootloader?

flutas7• 2 years ago

Yes*

* re-locking wipes your device to a factory state

glitchc3• 2 years ago

In that case it sounds like a software protection product has been applied to the AI-based applications. That product is doing a simple check that should be fairly easy to hypass through other means.

SushiHippie• 2 years ago

Not on GrapheneOS, you are able to re-lock it after installing GraphenOS (and you should), I think it just wipes the user data, but definitely not to a factory state

semi-extrinsic• 2 years ago

Sounds like a win-win scenario?

complaintdept• 2 years ago

Yeah I'm not seeing a downside to this.

fsflover12• 2 years ago

Until they start removing more features.

jsheard2• 2 years ago

This isn't unprecedented, Sony used to encrypt most of their phones image processing stack with a key which was deleted forever if you unlocked the bootloader, making the camera permanently perform much worse even if you re-locked the bootloader later. Likewise with Winevine DRM, unlocking the bootloader will break L1 playback, either forever or until you re-lock depending on the device.

I'm guessing this is Google similarly trying to stop people extracting their local models by not letting unlocked devices access them. I wonder if they'll also crack down on porting the Pixel Camera app to non-Pixel devices, people have been doing that forever because the processing is better than many devices native camera apps.

treyd2• 2 years ago

That this is legal is crazy to me. Such a strong reason to split up the hardware and software sides of the businesses.

alphabettsy3• 2 years ago

Why would it be illegal?

I’m not saying it’s right, but what would the law look like making it illegal and what would the impact be positive and negative?

flutas7• 2 years ago

I'm guessing this is Google similarly trying to stop people extracting their local models by not letting unlocked devices access them.

It seems like it's not even that thought out. Google allows the devices to fully download the models...just not run them?

If you want the models, here ya go: https://pastebin.com/jh4YG5jX

That's every file the app downloads on launch.

EDIT: Seemingly I'm wrong. Someone below in another comment stated that they are not allowing the device to download the Gemini Nano model and that's what the failure is from.

gruez• 2 years ago

But are they encrypted?

DownrightNifty2• 2 years ago

Oh wow, that's interesting, thanks for sharing. I was experimenting with the Pixel Recorder app, which calls into the AICore system service, which calls into the Protected Download API to download its models. Based on the URLs ("pixelai-models" vs "aicore-models") it looks like Pixel Screenshots is doing its own thing and not using AICore.

lysp• 2 years ago

Is this the same model?

Someone looks like they extracted it and uploaded to HF.

https://huggingface.co/wave-on-discord/gemini-nano/tree/main

chimeracoder• 2 years ago

Unlocking the bootloader has long broken a lot of functionality. Play Integrity (formerly known as SafetyNet) provides three levels of checks, and increasingly apps are requiring the phone to pass the second level in order to use the app.

Until last year, it was possible to spoof the second level (though not the third), with an unlocked bootloader, but Google started cracking down on that hard and it's essentially a game of whack-a-mole. Because the spoofing requires finding the fingerprint for a supported device that hasn't yet been banned (of which there are a finite number), it's a losing battle.

That said, unlocking the bootloader on Pixel devices is less useful than it used to be, because of an expansion between what the base device already does and a degradation of what an unlocked and/or rooted device can do. There are fewer custom ROMs than there were a decade ago, and (unlocked) Pixel devices get rapid updates with long official support.

Rooting the device used to give you the ability to install custom adblockers and bypass screenshot restrictions, but Android now has better support for DNS-based adblocking built in, and they've now cut off the main loopholes that allowed people to screenshot apps that block access. I think it's now impossible to screenshot an app if the app has blocked screenshots[0]. Ironically, it's easier to screenshot or get videos of apps on iOS than of those same apps on Android - I don't know if that's because developers don't bother to implement the blocking APIs on iOS or some other reason, but more than once I've ended up having to pull out a backup iPhone in order to screenshot/record something I couldn't on a Pixel device.

Pixel phones already don't include most of the bloatware that comes with other devices, and the remaining stuff is built in and can't really be removed without impacting the core functionality of the device. So root access gets you a lot less than it used to, for Pixel devices.

[0] In the spirit of classic bash, I am asserting that it's impossible, half hoping that someone will take that as an opportunity to correct me: https://web.archive.org/web/20230711000352/bash.org/?152037

lofaszvanitt4• 2 years ago

Are you not allowed to take screenshots of specific apps? Not gonna buy this phone then :(.

treyd2• 2 years ago

It's a general Android feature that I believe is meant to be used to make exfil of sensitive data harder.

HeatrayEnjoyer• 2 years ago

It's an Android API, not specific to this phone.

josephcsible3• 2 years ago

If that's a deal breaker, then what phone would you buy? Every Android phone supports FLAG_SECURE (which is such an Orwellian name), and iOS has its own equivalent API: https://github.com/JayantBadlani/ScreenShield

jazzyjackson• 2 years ago

Imagine my surprise when I tried to take a screenshot on Apple Vision Pro of how cool it was to watch Apple TV while chopping vegetables, only to find that Franklin had been replaced by a black box.

mmmlinux• 2 years ago

Go try to take a screen shot of Netflix.

privacyking5• 2 years ago

I find all this screenshot blocking stuff stupid. You can just point another phone or camera at the screen to grab a "screenshot" anyway. It's just security fluff, and ultimately just degrades the user experience.

fragmede• 2 years ago

it's okay to be wrong about something

tveita• 2 years ago

An unlocked bootloader is the only way to take a local backup of app data now, afaik, since they've made the adb backup tool more and more useless - and phone transfers too.

So you can either have no banking app, lose all your data when your Pixel glitches out, or (recommended option) upload all your data to the cloud for the voyeurs at Google to perv at.

RobotToaster• 2 years ago

half hoping that someone will take that as an opportunity to correct me

Well, you can use another pixel to take a photo of the screen...

privacyking5• 2 years ago

Great post. This is one of the great enshittifications affecting android. I currently use grapheneos but I'm likely going to move to iOS. More and more apps are no longer allowed to run / have broken features due to the play integrity api.

If I'm forced to live in a walled garden, might as well go with the well maintained one that isnt run by a monopolistic surveillance/advertising company.

hellojesus2• 2 years ago

Do you have Play Services installed? I, thankfully, have yet to run into an issue with any apps and Play Integrity, but I also export my sdks that are installed on a profile with GPS so I can install them on my main profile. I also hope to be able to use those outdated versions if they ever go to Play Integrity required states.

fsflover12• 2 years ago

This is one of the great enshittifications affecting android. I currently use grapheneos but I'm likely going to move to iOS.

Are you saying that iOS is immune to the enshittification? Why not invest in true alternatives (GNU/Linux smartphones)?

commercialnix• 2 years ago

I'll gladly finance at 4x the cost (so like around $5,000) to purchase an alternative Pixel for a fully open source bootloader with physically compartmentalized chips with open interfaces and a less sleek device.

I don't give a shit about Ai slop.

fsflover12• 2 years ago

Sounds a bit like Librem 5.

gkhartman2• 2 years ago

I wish it was comparable. The Librem 5 is years behind flagship smartphone hardware. I want to switch, but it would be difficult to give up the stability that comes with Android. That said, maybe the Librem has improved in the last year or so.

codethief• 2 years ago

Is it just the unlocking or do those apps also look at the exact keys securing the boot chain & OS? In other words, what if I install GrapheneOS and lock the bootloader again?

flutas7• 2 years ago

I've personally looked into the Pixel Screenshots check.

It appears that they are doing server side verification of the devices TEE[1] keys plus bootloader checks, either of which will trip it.

This can be spoofed using leaked keys (that get revoked fairly quick), but in this case it seems they are also verifying that the keys are the keys for their Pixel 9 devices.

[1] https://source.android.com/docs/security/features/trusty

privacyking5• 2 years ago

On a tangent, have you ever looked into the google phone app and how it decides whether it will offer call screening?

DownrightNifty2• 2 years ago

I took a brief look into it, and they use the Google Private Compute Services Protected Download API to download the Gemini Nano model, which uses remote attestation to cryptographically ensure that your device is running the stock ROM: https://github.com/google/private-compute-services/tree/mast...

I'm not sure why they do that, tbh, since Gemini Nano is now part of Chrome, and you can download it without remote attestation. If you were dedicated enough, you could probably force the AICore system app on a rooted device into using the Gemini Nano model you downloaded from Chrome. I briefly attempted this but it proved too annoying so I gave up.

Edit: It appears Pixel Screenshots works differently than Pixel Recorder, which is what I was looking into.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41373011

rchaud3• 2 years ago

Pixel Screenshots [...] which lets you capture screenshots that are analyzed by Google’s Gemini Nano on-device AI and saved in a searchable index, allowing you to ask Google for information about things you saved days, weeks, or months ago..

Sounds like a benefit, to be honest. I take a lot of screenshots. It's never occurred to me to "ask Google" about something I screenshotted. I don't hoard screenshots, they're actively used for something, maybe an idea for a creative project, or a quote I liked. Once they're logged somewhere, I delete the screenshot, as it's no longer necessary.

This feature also sounds suspiciously similar to Windows Recall.

LegitShady• 2 years ago

as long as it still does call screening im ok. the rest is AI hype garbage.

bitwize• 2 years ago

The "and nothing of value was lost" meme seems applicable here.

fsflover12• 2 years ago

Until they start removing more features.

testitest1• 2 years ago

This is exactly the reason why Fairphone should increase their Hardware security comparable to the Titan M2 so that there is an environmentally friendly, secure alternative out there that support AS many custom Roms/OS AS possible.

Unlocking the Pixel 9 bootloader breaks some Pixel AI apps

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