Saint Pixnapping, Who Kidnapped Other People's Pixels

Patron of Android screens, pixels drawn by other apps, and permissions that weren't even needed.

Life

On 13 October 2025 a group spanning Berkeley, the University of Washington, UC San Diego and Carnegie Mellon revealed Pixnapping. An Android app with no permissions could force other apps' sensitive pixels into the rendering pipeline and, measuring timing through a GPU side channel, read them one by one, even reconstructing six-digit codes. Google scrambled to fix it, but the first patch was bypassed.

Prayer

O Saint Pixnapping, who reads your neighbour's screen one pixel at a time, let our pixels never leak through the timing of their drawing. Amen.

How to celebrate

Celebrated by installing Android security updates as soon as they arrive, in the hope that this time they hold.

A pixel stolen one at a time, a secret lost all at once.