Security researchers recently disclosed a serious privacy vulnerability in the Google Pixel’s inbuilt screenshot editor tool. The editor tool allows users to redact, crop and change images on a Google Pixel device. The discovered vulnerability shows that it is possible to restore up to 80% of the original image from the redacted and/or cropped image. The researchers had even released a tool to demonstrate this vulnerability. The vulnerability could expose sensitive information that the image creator had redacted on their Google Pixel device. Google had just fixed the issue, however the vulnerability has been around for the last 5 years and any images shared is vulnerable to this. This issue impacts all Pixel models running Android 9 and later, which is when the editor tool was introduced.
This segment was created for the It’s 5:05 podcast