InferenciumI am Inference, a cybersecurity researcher based in United Kingdom.
I am the founder, lead developer, and administrator, of Inferencium, a security-focused,
privacy-focused, brand of software.
All opinions are my own, and are not necessarily shared with projects or people I am
affiliated with.
I write about my research and experience in cybersecurity and also physical security. Most of my postings are security-related, but I occasionally post about other aspects of my life.
I am an open source advocate for the preservation and modifiability of source code. I
believe source code should be considered human knowledge as much as past knowledge and
teachings were; it is how modern humanity survives and runs.
Source code being modifiable allows it to be adapted for use by anyone, whether to add
features, harden it for increased security and/or privacy, or provide accessibility for
disabled users.
I am also a modular design advocate for the ability to securely and robustly make changes to
hardware and software without the entire system being affected.
If you want to contact me for any reason, you can use my contact methods.
| Type | Hardware | Description | Source model (License) |
| Smartphone |  Google Pixel 6 |
Google Pixel devices are the best Android devices available on the market for
security and privacy. They allow locking the bootloader with a custom Android Verified Boot (AVB) key in order to preserve security and privacy features when installing a custom operating system, such as verified boot which verifies that the OS has not been corrupted or tampered with, and rollback protection which prevents an adversary from rolling back the OS or firmware version to a previous version with known security vulnerabilities. They also include a hardware security module (Titan M2, improving on the previous generation Titan M) which is extremely resistant to both remote and physical attacks due to being completely isolated from the rest of the system, including the operating system. Titan M2 ensures that the device cannot be remotely compromised by requiring the side buttons of the device to be physically pressed for some sensitive operations. Titan M2 also takes the role of Android StrongBox Keymaster, a hardware-backed Keystore containing sensitive user keys which are unavailable to the OS or apps running on it without authorisation from Titan M2 itself. Insider attack resistance ensures that Titan M2 firmware can be flashed only if the user PIN/password is already known, making it impossible to backdoor the device without already knowing these secrets. Google Pixel device kernels are compiled with forward-edge control-flow integrity and backward-edge control-flow integrity to prevent code reuse attacks against the kernel. MAC address randomisation is implemented well, along with minimal probe requests and randomised initial sequence numbers. Google releases guaranteed monthly security updates, ensuring Google Pixel devices are up-to-date and quickly protected against security vulnerabilities. Pixel 6-series devices are a large improvement over the already very secure and private previous generation Pixel devices. They replace ARM-based Titan M with RISC-V-based Titan M2, reducing trust by removing ARM from the equation. Titan M2 is more resiliant to attacks than Titan M, and is AVA_VAN.5 certified, the highest level of vulnerability assessment. Google's in-house Tensor SoC includes Tensor Security Core, further improving device security. Pixel 6-series devices are supported for a minimum of 5 years from launch, an increase from previous generations' support lifecycles of 3 years. |
| Type | Software | Description | Source model (License) |
| Operating system |  Gentoo Linux |
Gentoo Linux is a highly modular, source-based Linux-based operating system which
allows vast customisation to tailor the operating system to suit your specific needs.
There are many advantages to such an operating system, with the most notable being the
ability to optimise the software for security, privacy, performance, or power usage;
however, there are effectively unlimited other use cases, or a combination of multiple
use cases. I have focused on security hardening and privacy hardening, placing performance below those aspects, although my system is still very performant. Some of the hardening I apply includes stack protection, signed integer overflow wrapping, and GrapheneOS' hardened_malloc memory allocator. You can find my personal Gentoo Linux configurations in my personal configuration respository. |
Open source (GPLv2-only) |
| Web browser |  Chromium |
Chromium is a highly secure web browser which is often ahead of other web browsers in security aspects. It has a dedicated security team and a very impressive security brag sheet. Chromium's security features include a strong multi-layer sandbox, strong site isolation, Binding Integrity memory hardening, and control-flow integrity (CFI). | Open source (BSD 3-Clause) |
| Type | Software | Description | Source model (License) |
| Operating system |  GrapheneOS |
GrapheneOS is a security-hardened, privacy-hardened, secure-by-default
Android-based operating system which implements extensive, systemic security and privacy
hardening to the Android Open Source Project used as its base codebase. Its hardening
includes closing gaps for apps to access sensitive system information, a secure app
spawning feature which avoids sharing address space layout and other secrets AOSP's
default Zygote app spawning model would share,
hardened kernel, hardened memory allocator
(hardened_malloc) to protect against common memory corruption vulnerabilties,
hardened Bionic standard C library,
stricter SELinux policies, and local and remote hardware-backed attestation
(Auditor) to ensure the OS has not been corrupted or tampered with. GrapheneOS only supports high security and well-supported devices which receive full support from their manufacturers, including firmware updates, long support lifecycles, secure hardware, and overall high security practices. For an extensive list of features GrapheneOS provides, visit its official features list which provides extensive documentation. |
Open source (MIT) |
| Web browser |  Vanadium |
Vanadium is a security-hardened, privacy-hardened Chromium-based web browser which
utilises GrapheneOS' operating system hardening to implement stronger defenses to the
already very secure Chromium web browser. Its hardening alongside Chromium's base
security features includes
disabling JavaScript just-in-time (JIT) compilation by default,
stubbing out the battery status API to prevent abuse of it, and
always-on Incognito mode as an option. Vanadium's source code, including its Chromium patchset, can be found in its official repository. |
Open source (GPLv2-only) |
| Messenger |  Molly |
Molly is a security-hardened, privacy-hardened
Signal client which hardens Signal by using a variety of
unique features, allowing
locking the database when not in use, and
utilising Android StrongBox to protect user keys using the device's hardware
security module. Molly is available in 2 flavours:
|
Open source (GPLv3) |
| Messenger |  Conversations |
Conversations is a well-designed Android XMPP client which serves as the de facto XMPP reference client and has great usability. | Open source (GPLv3-only) |