Bringing Rust to the Pixel Baseband

Key Takeaways

• Google is migrating the Pixel device baseband to the Rust programming language as part of its ongoing effort to advance the security of Pixel devices.
• The baseband is a high-value attack surface because it processes untrusted wireless traffic, and Rust's memory safety removes entire classes of memory-corruption vulnerabilities.
• Pixel users benefit from reduced risk of baseband-level remote compromise as Google continues hardening the most security-critical component of Android phones.