John Wu Joins Google For Android Security

The Magisk developer and root specialist Hung-Lin Wu, often better known as John Wu or Topjohnwu, is now working for Google. The group has brought Wu into its team for the platform security of Android – of all things, the team that Wu has been working against so far.

As John Wu announced yesterday on his Twitter account, he is now part of the Android Platform Security Team at Google. He is happy to work with the talented people who have been “on the other side” so far. He is excited to see what he will work on in the future, Wu added.

John Wu is one of the best-known developers when it comes to giving the users of Android smartphones root access and thus significantly more room for maneuver. Wu developed the Magisk tool, which in many cases enables root access and makes it much easier to use.

With the MagiskHide component, it was possible to continue to use games or mobile banking solutions on devices with root access. In the meantime, various changes to Google’s security platform SafetyNet have made it much more difficult to continue using the options that were previously available thanks to Magisk with existing root access.

John Wu continues to be the main developer behind Magisk, while the project has long been overseen by other developers in some areas. The skills of the programmer behind Magisk are in great demand in the tech industry. In 2019, Wu started working for the core platform team behind Apple’s Siri before he was hired full-time in a machine translation team by the US computer company.

Ironically, Wu’s move to Google is working for the very same team that Magisk and MagiskHide have played cat-and-mouse with for years. To what extent this will have a negative impact on the ability to root access and bypassing SafetyNet on Android-based devices remains to be seen.