I don't get it... Why is rebooting a locked phone more secure?
this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2024
100 points (97.2% liked)
News
23361 readers
3609 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Every time the phone reboots, it disables biometric unlocking until the correct pin is entered.
Most hacking tools that police have access to take advantage of the weaker security found in the biometric unlock mode.
By randomly restarting, the phone’s storage stays fully encrypted until the correct pin or passcode is entered, which is far more secure as it takes either a brute force attack to guess the correct pin, or a court order compelling the person to provide the pin or passcode.
Fun fact, in the United States, a pin or passcode is considered private property, and the police can’t legally force you to provide it without a warrant. However, your face or fingerprints are not considered private property, and they can and have used biometrics to unlock phones without user consent or a warrant before.
If you ever get stopped by the cops, make sure to reboot your phone so they have a harder time finding incriminating evidence.
I hope this gets added to Android.
I believe this option just came to my Pixel 7 a few weeks back.
Android is already disabling fingerprint reader every 72 hours. So what's the difference?
The encryption key of the device storage is kept in memory while in AFU state for practical reasons, you don't want to wait for the encryption key to be generated everytime you unlock the device, then wait for apps to restart and sync their data.
A reboot will discard that key from memory and return the phone back in BFU state, making it much more difficult to extract data from a device.
https://blogs.dsu.edu/digforce/2023/08/23/bfu-and-afu-lock-states/
Its in GrapheneOS(an android custom ROM) if you're that way inclined.
Sadly I can't, need to keep the stock OS for work.
If you use your personal phone for work you can do with it whatever the hell you want, it's your phone. If work requires you to do something they can give you a phone in which tondo that
Ah, I don't use my personal phone for work stuff or my work phone for personal stuff. GrapheneOS also only supports Pixel phones.
Came here to say this
GrapheneOS is not a custom ROM
I get that it's not actually ROM, but this is the normal term used. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_custom_Android_distributions
This is a list of Android distributions, Android-based operating systems (OS) commonly referred to as Custom ROMs or Android ROMs, forked from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) without Google Play Services included officially in some or all markets, yet maintained independent coverage in notable Android-related sources.
Emphasis mine.
Wait I thought we were supposed to hate on iphones here.
Yeah, I debated whether to post it or not. = )
iPhones suck. This is still an objective improvement to them and currently an advantage over Android. Hatred and blind hatred aren't the same.
GrapheneOS supports it.
That's super cool! I guess I should've expected that. Still unfortunately means you need to be a Pixel owner and to have installed a non-default OS, which is an extreme minority of Android users – compared to iOS 18.1 blanketing every 12th-or-later-gen iPhone.
Yeah... I hope that it becomes a standard part of Android one day.
Broken clock... Twice a day... ya know
Last week it was theorized that iOS 18 would reboot after 24 hours if it lost connection from the internet. That would be even better, since it would fuck people trying to work around FindMy.
Hopefully they've implemented it in a way that the phone can still get wiped before initial unlock.
How do you mean trying to work around FindMy? Like phone thieves?
Thieves, authorities, crazy ex, anyone.
FindMy will allow you to remotely secure or wipe the device. But the device needs to be online to get that request to lock or wipe from iCloud.
Surely the user could just take out the SIM card and that would prevent it from ever connecting to the internet?
Sure it could connect over Wi-Fi still but the chances of it being next to a network it has connected to before are very slim.
That’s my point. People try to keep stolen or confiscated phones from reaching the cloud. Many have proposed a faster auto-reboot for phones that aren’t online. Maybe reducing it from 72 hours to 12 or 24.
What SIM card?
Yea, eSIM is starting to take over the contemporary phone market.
The last 3 generations of iPhone released in the US do not have physical SIM card slots at all.