The project lost a key security engineer: It became known about the forced conscription of a GrapheneOS developer

The project lost a key security engineer: It became known about the forced conscription of a GrapheneOS developer

The creator of the mobile operating system GrapheneOS reports the forced mobilization of their lead developer.

It is not specified where this took place, but judging by the following phrase, in Ukraine: "We avoided specifying the country or war to keep GrapheneOS out of debates about forced conscription in the context of an existential defensive war."

In X, the developers specifically refuted the assumption that their colleague is from Russia or Israel. However, they did not respond to several mentions of Ukraine.

On April 18, the official GrapheneOS accounts reported that a few weeks ago, one of the two lead developers of the project "was forcibly detained and sent to war." Colleagues revealed that immediately after his disappearance, they revoked his access to the project as a security measure. It was later discovered that the detention was not related to GrapheneOS.

The colleagues stated that there is no possibility to overturn the decision to conscript the developer for military service. They referred to the mobilized employee as a "talented security researcher and engineer." They claim to have tried to convey this information to the military command in hopes that the developer would not end up on the front lines.

The company states on its website that it is registered in Canada but collaborates with developers worldwide.

GrapheneOS is an open-source mobile operating system based on the Android Open Source Project and initially created with a focus on user security and privacy. It can only be installed on Google Pixel devices.