The attacks on GrapheneOS from Copperhead and their supporters including within other projects were not a fight we picked. You're pushing a false narrative in support of years of libel, bullying and harassment towards us. Your project's team has regularly engaged in very underhanded attacks on ours despite us never doing anything to you. We have archives of it.
Here's an example of what you support by the founder of Murena and /e/ who you support linking to libel and harassment on a neo-nazi conspiracy site (check out the site for yourself):
The video that's linked there is an extraordinarily dishonest character assassination video filled with very blatantly false claims. The person who posted the video is unsurprisingly friends with a bunch of neo-nazis. Copperhead failed in their attempt at filing a baseless lawsuit against us and is on track to pay years of our legal fees.
A typical approach you folks take is linking to Kiwi Farms adjacent harassment content based on fabricated stories and spin targeting myself and the rest of our team. One of the two main people orchestrating harassment towards us has an identity verified Kiwi Farms account and was the one who involved them in targeting me (kiwifarms . st/members/larossmann.132201/).
GrapheneOS did not attack you or your project. The same goes for the people you're supporting who chose to attack us for years and then feigned being victims when we finally began defending ourselves. We'll defend ourselves from the libel from your project too. You're choosing to make manipulative attacks on it without an actual basis to try to pile on the existing ones, while feigning ignorance of all of that. The chat logs show you aren't actually ignorant of it.
You came to this thread to promote an inaccurate narrative in support of the absolutely vile attacks on us. Meanwhile, we've never done anything to you or your project beyond promoting it as one of the available options. We stopped doing that a while ago due to attacks from yourself and other project members. We haven't responded to those attacks beyond not mentioning your project anymore and removing our many past links to it.
We have chat logs archives of your rooms which can be used to prove ongoing attacks by your project members towards GrapheneOS and our team. That includes voicing support for harassment content. Is it as severe as what we can show for many others? No, but it's enough. I'm not confusing you with someone else. I'm aware of who you are and what yourself and others you work with have said over the years.
You regularly attack the GrapheneOS project and our team in your chat rooms including supporting libelous claims about us, as do others who work with you.
Being on the receiving end of valid, technical criticism in response to making misleading claims about GrapheneOS for falsely marketing products is their own choice. It's certainly a lot nicer than being on the GrapheneOS team heavily targeted by libel, bullying and harassment from those groups. Here's a recent example of the founder of /e/ and Murena linking to libelous harassment content on a conspiracy site, which links to a Kiwi Farms style character assassination video from someone friends with neo-nazis:
Check out the site for yourself. The linked video is plainly filled with extraordinarily dishonest claims that are widely disproven. Copperhead is losing the legal battle very badly and should end up paying our years of legal expenses soon. Other groups attacking us can look forward to similar losses in court when our attention moves to them. Years of libel, bullying and harassment has consequences.
Alright, didn't mean to make any libelous claims, it's just so it happens I never saw any evidence from your accusations. I already know these people are the worst, but it would be helpful if in any of your posts you would share some evidence like you did right now.
Where's the evidence for the accusations being made towards me? No need to answer: fabrications and spin on Kiwi Farms and 2 Kiwi Farms adjacent videos on YouTube, which are regularly referenced and directly linked to by people involved with multiple companies and open source projects in the space. Here's a very recent example of the founder of /e/ and Murena once again linking to libelous harassment/bullying content, this time on a blatant neo-nazi conspiracy site:
He's done this many times before and has directly spread Kiwi Farms harassment content himself from his personal accounts along with using the /e/ and Murena accounts for similar attacks. We never picked any fight with /e/ or Murena, they spent years spreading misinformation about GrapheneOS to mislead people into buying highly insecure products and services. They're enraged by us countering that misinformation as we did here with verifiable, accurate information with third party sources you should read too from Divested Computing, Mike Kuketz, their own forum (sending sensitive data to OpenAI without consent and falsely claiming it's anonymized when questioned) and elsewhere:
What is it you think hasn't been adequately proven?
Our chat rooms, forum, etc. are being endlessly raided with CSAM, gore and harassment towards our team. Our team is being swatted and threatened on a regular basis. We're having endless libel and bullying directed towards us including these baseless claims that we're insane. What the people attacking us can point to is that they think our replies debunking it and defending ourselves are too verbose which somehow makes us insane and delusional. Us banning people from the Techlore and /e/ communities raiding our rooms pretending to be users initially then attacking our team with harassment or posting CSAM is somehow us being toxic rather than those communities being toxic. It's not them being targeted with harassment. It's not them having fabricated stories spread about them.
It's you folks making accusations without evidence which simply reference a bunch of harassment content proving what we're saying is true. Linking to that harassment content proves people are doing it since most people can see it for what it is: a bunch of poorly made lies and misrepresentations to target someone with harassment.
You're making libelous claims without evidence while falsely claiming that I'm doing it. This typically goes along with baseless claims that I'm insane, delusional, schizophrenic, etc. with links to extraordinarily dishonest content filled with obvious fabrications from a couple serial harassers. One of those serial harassers has an identity verified Kiwi Farms account and was the one who involved them in targeting me (kiwifarms . st/members/larossmann.132201/). We've provided a large amount of evidence. Here's the leader of Murena and /e/ linking to libelous harassment content towards me on a conspiracy site this week: https://archive.is/SWXPJ + https://archive.is/n4yTO and we have dozens more examples archived for him specifically. You target us with libelous claims, bullying and harassment then claim we're creating drama for defending ourselves from it and documenting it. If you want the 'drama' to stop then stop engaging in harassment.
Don't know if you're replying to a wrong person but my point in the comment was about many of the tweets that get passed around include claims without links to any evidence. The recent tweets I've just seen from the top of my head were in relation to accusations of /e/os and Iode having government ties, but no evidence for that was linked in the tweets. A common person isn't going to go digging where that evidence has been presented if it isn't very clearly available, if at all. It may have a hassle to include it to every tweek, but the impression stands. Also never contested any of the harassment you have received.
You're talking about people misrepresenting what we say and lying about it while ignoring the provided evidence. You shouldn't be basing what you think GrapheneOS says from people misrepresenting that as part of attacking it.
> claims without links to any evidence
You've provided no links to any evidence for your inaccurate claims about us.
> accusations of /e/os and Iode having government ties
What our project account actually said is that both have been attacking GrapheneOS with false claims about our project and team for many years, including the false narratives you're using. We've provided ample evidence of that and linked to a recent example of the founder of /e/ and Murena supporting libel/harassment content from a neo-nazi site here. If you need that linked again:
We can provide dozens more examples of him supporting harassment content. We don't link spreading harassment content so we try to avoid linking to it like this. People who are hostile towards us won't actually apply any skepticism to it but rather will just spread it to try to harm us more. Why would we regularly help them with doing it?
It is a fact that /e/ is heavily government funded despite the fact that it exists to build products for their for-profit Murena company to sell.
> The European Union has subsidized us to the tune of several million for this project.
This is the same EU moving ahead with passing Chat Control. /e/, Murena and iodéOS are based in one of the countries most strongly supporting it with national law enforcement actively smearing GrapheneOS with inaccurate claims due to considering a reasonably secure device intolerable. The recent attack from Duval linked above was made in the direct context of these smears against GrapheneOS. Duval has himself used his personal account, /e/ project accounts and Murena company accounts to falsely claim GrapheneOS isn't a privacy project, isn't for regular people and is only for people to protect themselves from the state. He has directly played into trying to marginalize it and support attacks on it from the French state which supports his project. Do you deny this? We did not say they're working with the government. We said they're taking advantage of it and trying to leverage it to harm us similarly to their years of spreading misinformation about GrapheneOS and supporting harassment towards our team to boost their extraordinarily insecure and non-private products/services. If you need third party sources on that, they're in https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand... and both Divested Computing + Mike Kuketz also cover iodéOS too, as do other experts.
> A common person isn't going to go digging where that evidence has been presented if it isn't very clearly available
Yet you believe inaccurate claims about us without evidence, including the ones you're propagating and making here. People engaging in these attacks linking to unsubstantiated claims and harassment material from each other is not evidence. A YouTube video with a self-contradictory and clearly dishonest monologue pretending to have references not showing any of what's claimed is not showing evidence. That apparently passes as evidence for you, but actual proof and things you can verify do not.
People in that thread mention a GrapheneOS project member together with the worst of bigotry, slurs and death wishes. And Rossman just decides to keep replying and talking in that thread. Like its worth engaging with these people and they deserve attention.
He didn't say anything about Gos devs in there, yet they say he did. It's just not true. Do you have a Facebook account? Facebook is full of scams, are you also a scammer? Probably.
He engaged / replied to the people that were talking about both a GrapheneOS dev and an Asahi Linux dev.
Imagine the following: People in a thread made about you start posting death wishes about people you have conflicts with, make bigotted comments about them and on top of that are in general being ableist and hateful towards multiple societal groups (things akin to "I wouldnt trust the GOS dev just like I wouldnt trust a <insert horrible slur agains trans people even though completely unrelated>").
Would you think it makes sense having a friendly chat with these people, as if they are worthy conversation partners? Shouldnt they either be ignored or judged?
Do you research everybody you engage with? Are you a fed?
He went there to refute some claims about himself, like a man, instead of crying behind organization brand on social media.
And stop moving the goal post. Now it's guilt by association, what's next?
He replied to the problematic bigotted messages of those people. Im not saying he talked to people that were acting problematic in other posts/threads. He engaged with problematic people saying problematic things as if they were totally fine unproblematic people worth engaging with in a friendly manner.
That's the most delusional thing I've read all month. Sometimes you must deal with problematic people. Ever heard of Daryl Davis? Be like him 1% and world will be a better place. Don't be like a reddit moderator.
We'll have the same update pace for security updates and major releases with the devices we're working on with our OEM partner. That's not specific to Pixels. It will in fact be easier to support the devices with the OEM partner due to them planning on doing most of the device support work including getting MTE working properly. For Pixels, we have to do a lot of work on device support, while for non-Pixels that work is going to be done for us. Our OEM partner is actively getting what's needed from Qualcomm including getting them to fix things. We're in direct contact with Qualcomm ourselves and plan to deploy new security features they've developed which are not yet available elsewhere.
Samsung and Google ship a small subset of the security preview patches early while we're shipping all of them. We're doing a lot of work to integrate and test those. We also have to port them from Android 16 to Android 16 QPR1 and now Android 16 QPR2. It seems they might start providing them for Android 16 QPR2 themselves but for now we had to port them for our QPR2 releases.
We also have to test and fix all the issues caused by us having much more advanced exploit protections including full system hardware memory tagging with a more advanced implementation. We uncover MANY upstream memory corruption bugs we need to fix. Features like Contact Scopes, Storage Scopes, 2-factor fingerprint authentication, etc. are not always easy to port to new versions. We still don't have early access to upcoming quarterly and yearly releases but we'll get it and then we can have day 1 updates for those instead of it taking days for an experimental release and around 1-2 weeks before it reaches the Stable channel. We intend to do much better than we are now, we just need the same early access OEMs have but don't actually use to make day 1 releases for major OS updates.
GrapheneOS has made substantial upstream contributions to the Linux kernel and Pixel drivers including vulnerability reports. Many of our kernel changes are for the out-of-tree drivers needed for Pixels which are in a separate repository from the Generic Kernel Image code from the upstream Linux kernel. We make important downstream changes including enabling many more of the upstream security features and adding important protections not yet available there. We worked with multiple upstream Linux kernel developers to get many of the changes we used to have upstream and therefore no longer need them. We have major kernel security improvements in development including more security-focused integration of hardware memory tagging, but indefinitely maintaining those downstream is not the way we try to do things.
We use much newer Generic Kernel Images than the stock Pixel OS as the base. Android 16 QPR2 was released this month and they finally shipped 6.1.145 from July 2025 for the Pixel 6 through Pixel 9 compared to us being on 6.1.158 which was the latest until yesterday (6.1.159) which will be incorporated soon. It's similar for our 6.6 and 6.12 branches compared to theirs. 6.6 is the current Pixel 10 and near future Pixel 6 through Pixel 9 branch. They only update the kernel revision every 3 months in quarterly/yearly releases so this is the smallest the delay gets right after a quarterly release. They'll still be on 6.1.145 until the next major release in March 2026 so the current delay of having the July 2025 kernel in December 2025 is not representative but rather is the small side of the delay. Shipping the newer LTS revisions is not easy due to frequent regressions both in the upstream code and to a much lesser extent in the out-of-tree drivers needed for Pixels which often need small changes to adapt them to the new LTS revisions.
GrapheneOS does a lot of deep security analysis and has proposed firmware, kernel and userspace exploit protections adopted by Google. We helped them get a bunch of vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild blocked off as whole classes of vulnerabilities including perf events, reset attacks on fastboot mode and much more. GrapheneOS is focused on addressing classes of vulnerabilities rather than individual bugs. Google puts a decent amount of resources into finding and fixing individual bugs and that isn't our focus. We get the bug fixes from the upstream project many months earlier and the Pixel driver fixes from them other than cases we fix them early due to finding them with hardware memory tagging which they don't use for the kernel even in Advanced Protection mode (or most of the base OS processes either, while we always use it for both with a much better implementation in userspace).
Most of our changes are in userspace where we don't try to collaborate with upstream developers as much as we do with the Linux kernel. Most of userspace is not developed as openly in a way we can properly collaborate.
Android CTS and VTS are open source so we can and do use those. They're filled with flaky and badly made tests along with enforcing anti-privacy and anti-security design decisions though, so not everything is supposed to pass. Google likes to enforce that OEMs aren't allowed to make certain kinds of privacy and security improvements which could impact app compatibility until Google decides to do it themselves in new major Android versions with new API levels forcing app developers to deal with it.
They don't allow adding our Network and Sensors toggles which are detected as modifications to the permission model. They don't detect Contact Scopes and Storage Scopes but they might be considered Compatibility Definition Document violations. We don't worry about this, our focus is passing the tests which are actually relevant including the ones we've added for duress PIN, hardened_malloc, our more advanced hardware memory tagging integration that's always on, etc.
If we wanted to get access to the proprietary GTS for Google Mobile Services to see how much sandboxed Google Play passes, we could, but we focus on real world app compatibility.
GrapheneOS doesn't have any proprietary kernel drivers. There aren't any for the supported devices. Firmware and a subset of userspace driver libraries such as the Mali GPU driver library are what's proprietary.
France has made it clear they expect to have a backdoor in end-to-end encryption apps and disk encryption. They've been saying that it's unacceptable not to have a backdoor in a bunch of these news stories they've gotten published by contacting the media. They've said if we don't cooperate with that, they'll take similar actions against us as they did SkyECC and Encrochat meaning hijacking our servers and trying to have us arrested.
Le Parisien has 2 articles about this, not only one, and https://archive.is/UrlvK is one of the places they talk about going after us if we don't cooperate with providing them access to devices. It's not possible for us to provide an update which bypasses the throttling for brute force protection so what they're asking isn't even helping them break into specific devices but helping them compromise security for everyone in anticipation of rare cases of criminals using devices. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46038241 explains lack of technical ability to compromise security after the fact. Titan M2 is specifically designed with insider attack resistance so that Google making an update disabling the brute force protection won't be accepted by the secure element without the Owner user successfully unlocking first. We don't have the signing key for the Titan M2 firmware anyway. This is part of our required hardware-based security features which we're working on providing in a Pixel alternative with a major Android OEM working with us right now. We talked to them about the France situation already and it does not negatively impact our partnership. It may be a good idea to speed up an official announcement with them to counter the narrative being pushed by France's law enforcement agencies now.
> France has made it clear they expect to have a backdoor in end-to-end encryption apps and disk encryption.
Note that "France" and "Johanna Brousse" (as the lead investigator lobbying for more agency data access) are not the same, by a couple million people.
Now's the time to get ahead of this. Communicate openly why Open Source matters, what's at stake, and try to ally with existing organizations like the EFF, IETF, Linux Foundation, CCC e.V. and others. They know how to deal with the media, and it's okay to ask for help.
Please let another person check the article from a non-technical perspective, because that's where journalists have a strategical bonus. If the blogpost/article/video/whatever contains too much technological lingo, the masses won't be able to understand it.
Wish you the best.
PS: I hope that you can see that not all people are as messed up as the kiwifarm doxxers. I've seen their "call to arms" to start new swatting attempts etc. Stay safe.
PPS: Don't engage with people that have anime avatars. Just block them. Your time is wasted trying to read or reply to them. Hate is a mind infiltration technique.
I appreciate the answer and the work on GrapheneOS! It seems there's a lot of work going on with the QPR1 release and this French matter doesn't make things easier for the team. Good luck!
To be fair, the quote in the second article is from Johanna Brousse who is behind the Durov arrest.
> "Mais ça ne nous empêchera pas de poursuivre les éditeurs, si des liens sont découverts avec une organisation criminelle et qu’ils ne coopèrent pas avec la justice."
> “But that won't stop us from prosecuting publishers if links to a criminal organization are discovered and they fail to cooperate with the justice system.” (DeepL)
I understand this can be seen as more threatening even if the whole quote softens this a bit.
Given what we know about how most Western nations feel about secure communications, what seems more likely?
The reality is that the west got very comfortable with a world where any and all communication can be trivially wire tapped.
Telephony, messaging, and even the internet - these were not only abused, but abused on such a scale that virtually no data could ever be safe from the eye of the state. Even printed media would leak it's location, etched in microscopic ink.
We, unceramoniously and rapidly, yanked this power out from underneath them. For the first time in a very long time, it is possible to have communication which cannot be surveilled.
Knowing what we know about how governments work, are we shocked that there is push back to this? Frankly, the only reason we aren't seeing more abuse is because the big dogs still permit absolute serveillance. I'm sure at the behest of the state.
Projects like grapheneos and signal represent an existential threat to the current model of citizen serveillance and crime solving. Starving dogs will bite.
> They've said if we don't cooperate with that, they'll take similar actions against us as they did SkyECC and Encrochat meaning hijacking our servers and trying to have us arrested.
No, they haven’t.
You are letting your paranoia talk by widely amplifying the content of two newspapers articles in media affiliated with the far right.
I’m quite surprised by your reactions to be fair because both SkyECC and Encrochat were actually affiliated with organised crimes. As far as I know, GrapheneOS isn’t.
French law enforcement chose to do interviews with those newspapers and nearly all of the content of those articles is paraphrasing or directly quoting what they said. There's very little input from the journalists into those articles. They treated the claims from the state as facts and conveyed them as such, then posted our responses to vague queries not giving us the details of what was being claimed about us so we could properly respond to it.
It does appear to be what they want from us, but it's not possible to bypass the Weaver disk encryption throttling via compromised OS updates or even secure element updates. It's fully not possible to bypass the security of a strong passphrase, which we encourage via optional 2-factor authentication support for fingerprint+PIN as the main way people unlock to make using a passphrase as the primary lock method after booting or 48h timeout much more convenient.
Once they've established a rule that you have to help them in all cases, what stops them from forcing you to push an update to a phone while the user still has it, to collect information from the phone while actually unlocked and in use?
We won't comply with illegal demands, so how would they force us to do it?
GrapheneOS System Updater doesn't identify the device or user to the server. A massive portion of GrapheneOS users are using a VPN and some are using Tor so many of the IP addressed are VPN/Tor exit IPs shared between people. How would an update be targeted to a specific phone?
It's rate limiting on key derivation attempts. A key is made via scrypt from the passphrase. A hash of this key is used as an authentication token to obtain a random token from the secure element for the final hardware-bound key derivation to use as an additional input. Passing the wrong authentication token results in rapidly increasingly throttling. We documented the previous less aggressive ramp up at https://grapheneos.org/faq#encryption but it actually ramps up a lot faster now to make 4 digit PINs less horrible, although we still strongly recommend 6 random digits as the minimum.
Secure element updates don't only need to have a valid signature and greater version. They also require the Owner user to authenticate successfully after booting in order for it to be accepted. This is what they refer to as insider attack resistance, since it protects against them being coerced by a government into removing the brute force protection for a locked device via an update.
Here's an example of what you support by the founder of Murena and /e/ who you support linking to libel and harassment on a neo-nazi conspiracy site (check out the site for yourself):
https://archive.is/SWXPJ https://archive.is/n4yTO
The video that's linked there is an extraordinarily dishonest character assassination video filled with very blatantly false claims. The person who posted the video is unsurprisingly friends with a bunch of neo-nazis. Copperhead failed in their attempt at filing a baseless lawsuit against us and is on track to pay years of our legal fees.
A typical approach you folks take is linking to Kiwi Farms adjacent harassment content based on fabricated stories and spin targeting myself and the rest of our team. One of the two main people orchestrating harassment towards us has an identity verified Kiwi Farms account and was the one who involved them in targeting me (kiwifarms . st/members/larossmann.132201/).
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