Tuesday, August 16, 2022

Pixel 6 owners who upgrade to Android 13 can never go back

Android 13 on phone, tablet, laptop

Enlarge (credit: Google)

Android 13 is slowly rolling out to Pixel phones, but here's something to consider when that update message finally pops up on your device: You can never go back.

Google is apparently changing the way Android updates are enforced on its latest devices. A new warning message on the Pixel Factory Image page says that the Pixel 6, 6 Pro, and 6a can never go back to older versions of Android once they update:

Anti-rollback was first introduced in Android 8 as a security feature. Google can patch all the exploits it wants, but security fixes are meaningless if an attacker can just roll back a device to a previous version that's full of security holes. Rollback protection works by recording the newest installed version into tamper-evident storage that persists across device wipes, and now the system knows if it's on an old version or not. Previously, this feature would just show a warning message on boot (and it looks like that will still happen on the Pixel 5 and lower), but now, Google plainly says of the Pixel 6, "You will not be able to flash older Android 12 builds."

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from Tech – Ars Technica https://ift.tt/PfAlOhq

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