iVerify vice president of research Matthias Frielingsdorf points out that while Showcase represents a concerning exposure for Pixel devices, it is turned off by default. This means that an attacker would first need to turn the application on in a target’s device before being able to exploit it. The most straightforward way to do this would involve having physical access to a victim’s phone as well as their system password or another exploitable vulnerability that would allow them to make changes to settings.

Just a bit of alarmism then, with something that can be easily removed in an update.

The story isn’t nearly as dramatic as it seems. Maybe this thread can offer some nuance: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/112967309987371034

The issue relates to a software package called “Showcase.apk” that runs at the system level and lurks invisible to users. The application was developed by the enterprise software company Smith Micro for Verizon as a mechanism for putting phones into a retail store demo mode—it is not Google software. Yet for years, it has been in each Android release for Pixel and has deep system privileges, including remote code execution and remote software installation. Even riskier, the application is designed to download a configuration file over an unencrypted HTTP web connection that iVerify researchers say could be hijacked by an attacker to take control of the application and then the entire victim device.

“flaw”

any idea if de-google phones have this “feature”

I have doubts that this apk is enabled and running on all pixels, it’s especially not on custom roms such as Graphene (I just checked my own).

Kind of a nothing burger

All these updates and they let this get by. That’s pretty ridiculous.