This attack wouldn't work if every app, even an "offline game", has those implicit permissions by default. Many apps should at most have "Only while using the app" permission to access the Internet. Which would not be complete protection -- there's always the risk you misclick on a now-malicious app that you never use -- but it would make the attack far less effective.

IDK, I think there are obvious low-hanging attempts [0] such as: do not display secret codes in stable position on screen? Hide it when in background? Move it around to make timing attacks difficult? Change colours and contrast (over time)? Static noise around? Do not show it whole at the time (not necessarily so that user could observe it: just blink parts of it in and out maybe)? Admittedly, all of this will harm UX more or less, but in naïve theory should significantly raise demands for the attacker.

[0] Provided the target of the secret stealing is not in fact some system static raster snapshot containing the secret, cached for task switcher or something like that.

> The attacks described in Section 5 take hours to steal sensitive screen regions—placing certain categories of ephemeral secrets out of reach for the attacker app. Consider for example 2FA codes. By default, these 6-digit codes are refreshed every 30 seconds [38]. This imposes a strict time limit on the attack: if the attacker cannot leak the 6 digits within 30 seconds, they disappear from the screen

> Instead, assuming the font is known to the attacker, each secret digit can be differentiated by leaking just a few carefully chosen pixels

Throw a privacy notice to the users "This app will take periodic screenshots of your phone" You'd be amazed how many people will accept it.

> Did you release the source code of Pixnapping? We will release the source code at this link once patches become available: https://github.com/TAC-UCB/pixnapping

It's not exactly impossible to reverse what's happening here. You could have waited until it was patched but sounds like you wanted to get your own attention as soon as possible.

We have this tendency of adding more and more "features", more and more functionality 85% of which nobody asked for or has use for.

I believe that there will be a market for a small, bare bones secure OS in the future. Akin to how freeBSD is being run.

Given to rise of well defined templates (accurately vibe coding design for example: GitHub notification emails) phishing via email, I have literally stopped clicking links email and now I have stop launching apps from intent directly (say open with). Better to open manually and perform such operation + remove useless apps but people underestimate the attack surface (it can come through sdk, web page intents)

If you use the same password on two websites, any one of the two websites can use it to log you it in the second website (if it doesn't have an extra layer of security).

On paper security is pretty weak yet in practice these attacks are not very common or easy to do.

Either that or Meta's ability to track/influence emotional state by behaviour is that good that they can advertise to me things I've only thought of and not uttered or even searched anywhere.

Do not install apps. Use websites.

Apps have way too much permissions, even when they have "no permissions".