Bringing Rust to the Pixel Baseband

Publisher excerpt From Google Online Security Blog

Posted by Jiacheng Lu, Software Engineer, Google Pixel Team Google is continuously advancing the security of Pixel devices. We have been focusing on hardening the cellular baseband modem against exploitation. Recognizing the risks associated within the complex modem firmware, Pixel 9 shipped with mitigations against a range of memory-safety vulnerabilities. For Pixel 10, Google is advancing its proactive security measures further. Following our previous discussion on "Deploying Rust in Existing Firmware Codebases", this post shares a concrete application: integrating a memory-safe Rust DNS(Domain Name System) parser into the modem firmware. The new Rust-based DNS parser significantly reduces our security risk by mitigating an entire class of vulnerabilities in a risky area, while also laying the foundation for broader adoption of memory-safe code in other areas. Here we share our experience of working on it, and hope it can inspire the use of more memory safe languages in low-level environments. Why Modem Memory Safety Can’t Wait In recent years, we have seen increasing interest in the cellular modem from attackers and security researchers. For example, Google's Project Zero gained remote code execution on Pixel modems over the Internet. Pixel modem has tens of Megabytes of executable code. Given the complexity and remote attack surface of the modem, other critical memory safety vulnerabilities may remain in the predominantly memory-unsafe firmware code. Why DNS? The D…

Excerpt only, shown with attribution. This content belongs to the original publisher and has not been independently verified by CyberSecurity.pk.