Posted by Sherk Chung, Stephan Chen, Pixel team, and Roger Piqueras Jover, Ivan Lozano, Android team Pixel phones have earned a well-deserved reputation for being security-conscious. In this blog, we'll take a peek under the hood to see how Pixel mitigates common exploits on cellular basebands. Smartphones have become an integral part of our lives, but few of us think about the complex software that powers them, especially the cellular baseband – the processor on the device responsible for handling all cellular communication (such as LTE, 4G, and 5G). Most smartphones use cellular baseband processors with tight performance constraints, making security hardening difficult. Security researchers have increasingly exploited this attack vector and routinely demonstrated the possibility of exploiting basebands used in popular smartphones. The good news is that Pixel has…