GrapheneOSGrapheneOS is an open source project. Open source means it can be modified and used for any purpose including commercial ones. People making forks of GrapheneOS are supposed to rebrand it and make it clear that it's not the official GrapheneOS but rather a derivative of it.
A bunch of companies and individuals have sold devices with GrapheneOS or a fork of it. Many companies making forks of GrapheneOS haven't complied with our open source licenses and our separate rules for usage of our trademarks which we've been actively addressing for years.
From 2018 through around 2021, Abdoul Rasnab sold devices with his own proprietary fork of GrapheneOS. That's 4 years after the project was started. He had no involvement in creating or founding GrapheneOS. He also didn't write absolutely any of the GrapheneOS project's code.
Abdoul Rasnab said he wanted to support us and committed to providing a portion of the sales of devices. We had no formal business deal. He didn't need a commercial license to use GrapheneOS. We thought it was someone being generous, although he didn't end up sending most of it.
Abdoul Rasnab repeatedly misrepresented himself as a creator or founder of GrapheneOS on LinkedIn and elsewhere. He repeatedly agreed to stop but never followed through. Later, we found out he built his whole business around misrepresenting himself as having created GrapheneOS.
He used GrapheneOS as the name for his proprietary fork of GrapheneOS and also named his company founded in the Netherlands GrapheneOS. He didn't have authorization to do this and was misleading us about what he was doing and how he was presenting his involvement in GrapheneOS.
He took advantage of the fact that we were incredibly busy and under huge pressure from attacks by Copperhead. He acted as if he was supporting us while actually taking advantage of us and pretending he had created the open source project he didn't write 1 line of code in.
He did multiple interviews in Dutch with media in the Netherlands where he misrepresented himself as being the founder and creator of GrapheneOS. He told his customers he was the creator of GrapheneOS and that devices running a fork from him were using the official GrapheneOS.
To this day, Abdoul Rasnab misrepresents himself as a founder of GrapheneOS. He even portrays himself as being actively involved in the project. He makes many extraordinarily claims about himself unrelated to GrapheneOS which help to contextualize the claims about GrapheneOS.
His proprietary fork of GrapheneOS and his company both wrongly reusing the name of the project he forked only existed from around 2018 through 2021. The part that's still ongoing is that he keeps reverting back to promoting himself by claiming to have founded GrapheneOS.
Back in 2018, we renamed CopperheadOS to the Android Hardening Project as a placeholder and told people we were deciding on a new name. Abdoul Rasnab was one of multiple people who suggested GrapheneOS as a name. He seems to think that somehow made into his project post-rename.
We ended up having to purchase the grapheneos.com domain including the rights to the name. Run a WHOIS or RDAP check on grapheneos.com and you'll see it was registered in 2014. There was also a name collision with an academic project which renamed themselves.
The person who sold us the grapheneos.com domain with the original rights to the name only charged us around $500 to cover their costs along with wanting a phone running GrapheneOS and accepted an old used one. It's possible they're now a GrapheneOS and supporter.
Abdoul Rasnab misrepresented himself as creating and founding the project in order to gain an advantage over other companies selling devices with GrapheneOS. He had conflicts with those companies and he did things such as filing DMCA takedowns in our name without authorization.
He created a proprietary fork of GrapheneOS and founded a company selling phones with it in Europe. He was allowed to fork GrapheneOS and sell it but absolutely shouldn't have used the same name as the upstream project. He's passing this off as having created/founded GrapheneOS.
Abdoul Rasnab previously tried to extort us by coming up with fabricated stories about us and claiming he would ruin our reputation pushing those in the media. He backed down and he once again stopped wrongly calling himself a founder of the project but now he's back to doing it.
Abdoul Rasnab has created a website filled with AI slop where he claims to have discovered a bunch of severe vulnerabilities and claims credit for hacking multiple companies. He's once again falsely claiming to have founded GrapheneOS on this website:
Cybernews is a content farm presenting their coverage of information security as being investigative journalism and security research. We've previously debunked a story from them involving the Pixel 9 which was heavily spread by other news publications:
Cybernews has taken AI slop content from Abdoul Rasnab's site claiming credit for hacking a company and published it on their site, which is now being spread by other news sites:
https://cybernews.com/security/ajax-silenced-hacker-2017-data-breach/
This is the state of journalism in 2026. It's why we've posted this thread.
Abdoul Rasnab spent a year in prison in Spain which brought an end to his proprietary fork of GrapheneOS pretending to be the original project and his company selling it. We don't know the details. He claims he didn't commit a crime and was found to be innocent. It's possible.
We heard from several people who knew Abdoul Rasnab that the reason for his arrest and imprisonment while awaiting trial was him pretending to have committed crimes to impress a woman who turned out to be a police informant. That sounds a lot like what he's doing right now.
Abdoul's site claims he's responsible for major data breaches even including the 2014 celebrity nude photo leaks tied to iCloud. Abdoul has previously duped Dutch podcasts and news sites including Tweakers.net into publishing content claiming he founded GrapheneOS.
"Musty Bits" McGee@GrapheneOS well I'm certainly impressed
RightSprung will not complyThis sounds like a great crime novel plot actually.....
refraction 
@GrapheneOS incredible way to get yourself jailed. that's a lot more embarrassing than most crimes he could have committed.
adison verlice@GrapheneOS out of curiosity, would you think maybe this is where that propaganda from that French news source came from? the one about the grapheneOS being "criminal"? just curious
Gina@GrapheneOS That's messed up. Is he still doing this?
Johnny von Awesome
@mek2600 @Gina Yes, LinkedIn allows anyone to say they worked anywhere with no verification and no proper process available for addressing it as an organization. Abdoul Rasnab used to claim he was a Founder of GrapheneOS on his LinkedIn and after repeatedly agreeing to stop doing so reduced it to Co-Founder in his biography along with claiming to be a Director of something at GrapheneOS to this day. He has never worked for us, has never been in the project's internal chat rooms, etc.
@mek2600 @Gina He was only ever an external party who sold phones with GrapheneOS while misrepresenting himself as having created and founded GrapheneOS to help him sell phones. He would repeatedly agree to stop misrepresenting himself while secretly doing it on a far grander scale than we realized behind our backs. He was extremely manipulative and dishonest. He also seems to believe the phony stories he comes up with about himself. Check out his site:
@GrapheneOS @mek2600 that's so lame :/ I'm sorry you guys are dealing with that. Will keep it in mind; the IT sector and especially the open source community in the Netherlands is quite small.
Xtreix@GrapheneOS @mek2600 @Gina Damn this is scandalous ! It’s shameful to take credit for other people’s work without the slightest remorse and that misleads people, thanks for the info !
@GrapheneOS what do you think about legal action against him / his non-compliant fork ?
TuxOnBike@GrapheneOS I don’t know how this works, but is it possible for you to remove his Graphene OS “Experience” on LinkedIn?
@TuxOnBike How? LinkedIn allows people to claim anything they want.
@GrapheneOS Maybe LinkedIn removes the false entry if reported:
https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a1338436/ or via the support form: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/solve
https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a1338436/ or via the support form: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/solve
@TuxOnBike We've tried and they haven't done anything.
@GrapheneOS That’s just… I don’t even know. This must be frustrating.
Matthew Johnson@GrapheneOS @TuxOnBike this seems like an opportunity to leverage your Motorola partnership and have their legal department help you out.
saxnot@GrapheneOS what a loser
life doesn't sound fair when this defamation has no consequences