Google to bring enhanced firmware safety to your Android phone

So, you likely already know that all Android phones in recent years — or rather decades — have Systems on a Chip (SoC). These gizmos have numerous processors, each of which is responsible for something that makes your Android phone tick properly. That happens through firmware — special software that tells the part how to function.

However, each bit of firmware also provides numerous opportunities for malicious actors to take advantage of your phone’s hardware. And this is exactly what Google went in-depth on through its latest security blog.

The Android security team is applying years worth of experience in what they are calling “firmware hardening”. Which basically means enhanced security to prevent opportunistic exploitation of bugs, exploits and remote hijacking.

Still too much terminology? Well, put plainly: Android smartphones are to become more secure. What that means for you is that you will have to worry less and less about getting your smartphone effectively stolen by a malicious hacker.



But why is security at a firmware level that noteworthy, we hear you ask. Well, because firmware is the thing that tells your components what to do at a very basic level, having security processes in place might risk slowing them down. In turn, that may lead to severe slowdown of operation speeds if the security processes are not tweaked correctly. This is why Google is turning to a slew of partners to help solve this issue, which according to them has been a silent threat for many years.

The Big G’s Android teams have also spent a large chunk of time on rewriting entire features and functions of Android 13 in Rust. This is a programming language, which is safe from memory-attacks by design. The company has seen an impact and as such plans to continue using Rust from here on out, with future versions of Android.

All that being said, you are not going to really notice all of these security enhancements. If they are done properly, that is, and by the looks of things — doing things right is pretty much the plan. This, however, is still a huge step forward for Android security and we can't wait for it to arrive.