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arXiv · 2609.22900

SMS-delivered network-initiated SUPL on Pixel 8: a privacy assessment

Douglas Leith
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Abstract

A SUPL\_INIT message is a network-initiated trigger that can be sent to a handset using an SMS to unilaterally start a location session: on receipt, the handset is instructed to determine its own position and report it, together with an identifier such as its IMSI, to a server specified in the message, without any action by the phone's user. The concern motivating this investigation is whether such a message could be used to silently exfiltrate a handset's location and subscriber identity to a server under an attacker's control. We investigated this on a Google Pixel 8 handset, which uses a Samsung Exynos modem and a Broadcom GPS/GNSS subsystem. We find no privacy issue: the handset never sends location data to an attacker-chosen server as a result of an unsolicited SUPL\_INIT delivered by SMS.

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Douglas Leith. 2026-09-19. SMS-delivered network-initiated SUPL on Pixel 8: a privacy assessment. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.22900

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