Copperhead OS: The startup that wants to solve Android’s woeful security (Ars Technica)

[Posted August 10, 2016 by ris]

Ars Technica takes a look at Copperhead OS. "Copperhead OS, a two-man team based in Toronto, ships a hardened version of Android that aims to integrate Grsecurity and PaX into their distribution. Their OS also includes numerous security enhancements, including a port of OpenBSD’s malloc implementation, compiler hardening, enhanced SELinux policies, and function pointer protection in libc. Unfortunately for security nuts, Copperhead currently only supports Nexus devices. Google's Android security team have accepted many of Copperhead's patches into their upstream Android Open Source Project (AOSP) code base. But a majority of Copperhead's security enhancements are not likely ever to reach beyond the its small but growing user base, because of performance trade-offs or compatibility issues." Copperhead ships with F-Droid installed by default, but without Google Play; LWN reviewed this distribution in February.