First handset with MTE on the market (Project Zero)

The Google Project Zero blog celebratesthe launch of the Pixel8 handset, the first to make use of Arm'sMemory Tagging Extension (MTE). Linux has supported MTE since the 5.10 release in 2020,but that support has only now shown up (in experimental form) in anavailable handset.

I think this is a huge improvement for the general security of thedevice - many zero-click attack surfaces involve large amounts ofunsafe C/C++ code, whether that's WebRTC for calling, or one of themany media or image file parsing libraries. MTE is not a silverbullet for memory safety - but the release of the first productiondevice with the ability to run almost all user-mode applicationswith synchronous-MTE is a huge step forward, and something that'sworth celebrating!

The article includes detailed instructions for how to turn the MTE featureon.