Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “What REALLY happens when you restore your Android phone?”.
Running a factory reset on your Android phone is usually enough security for most, but is it enough to thwart the most dog-headed of hackers or even governments? What actually happens when you factory reset your Android phone well you’d expect your data to be wiped right. The actual truth is a little bit more complicated. Can data, though, be recovered from your phone after a factory reset? Well, the short answer is no. The slightly long answer is probably not and probably he’s doing, a lot of heavy lifting there, while social engineering and ke loggers do remain one of the most common ways of getting into your phone extracting data from your device is not impossible, even after a factory reset. All modern phones, ship with encryption, enabled out of the box and adding a complex passcode to the lock screen is all it takes to add a pretty serious amount of security, albeit not completely foolproof security. However, it’s a popular misconception that encryption and security are a guarantee against Data Theft. Even the most advanced security is really just a deterrent to the point where the amount of resources it takes to break through is too high for most hackers to deploy. Think of it like a fortified wall around your home, you can build it high enough, but someone with a tall enough ladder can still climb over it. Modern Android phones use a type of encryption called filebase encryption, and this was rolled out starting in Android 9.0 filebase encryption protects files in the user data partition and system partition separately. Each file is independently encrypted, using a unique key. In fact, all user data is protected by keys that are generated using a combination of Hardware, specific keys and the user credentials like say a pin or gesture based unlock.
Since the system partition is secured using device, specific Keys, filebase encryption will let your phone boot as usual, all the way through to the lock screen. This means you can receive phone calls or activate alarms, even without logging, in give it a shot for yourself. If you don’t believe me, if you restart your phone and don’t enter your PIN, any phone call received will not display the associated contact details, but it might show the call call a number which is a separate security issue of its own. That’S file based encryption at play and keeps your personal data safe. However, a secur as it is, there’s no such thing as fully secure in the world of computing and file based encryption on Android has been broken in the past, while recovering the master key from Ram requires literal surgery on a smartphone.
It’S not out of the realm of possibility for a dedicated enough person and has been achieved. Successful attempts have also been made at hacking into Samsung’s secure Enclave chip to take the phone from the bfu stage, which is before first unlock to the AFU stage, which is after first unlock, which decrypts the user partition and makes it a cinch to dump files assuming You’Ve already reset your phone, it does get more complicated, though, since the encryption key is tied to your password, the phone automatically resets, the key after a factor reset a Savvy hacker can still dump the phone storage perform data forensics on it and extract files. However, those files would be encrypt and reading them is next to Impossible. In fact, Android uses aes256 standard encryption which, as of today, does remain unbroken so, yes, your data can be recovered, but it would be unreadable. However, there are established tools like celebrite, which is marketed to security agencies and governments, and they are known to have additional exploits to break through the security on your phone and extract information, celebrite advertisers that can access both bfu and AFU modes.
Decrypt third party data and even extract to phone’s complete file system for further data analysis, considering that celite can break through the bfu and the AFU encryption is not out of the REM of possibility that it can generate decryption keys for existing data to the thing is: You’Ve probably got more significant problems to worry about. If the government is trying to hack into your phone for most users, a standard system reset should suffice in most cases, if you’ve made it this far into the video, though you might be thinking that there’s absolutely no need for you to worry about your data being Stolen once you factory reset your phone, and while that statement is l, largely true, taking additional measures to secure your data is never really a bad idea. Information security is preventative by nature and ensuring that your private data has been securely wiped is an easy and essential step towards guaranteeing it as it turns out. The solution is pretty simple and is the same as what we’ve used for decades to secure hard drives.
Zeroing out the storage on your phone is a sure short way of guaranteeing that it would be gibberish. Even if someone manages to extract the data from your phone, the play store has several applications that can perform the task, but we’ve had luck with the secure Wipeout app to perform. Several runs of writing large scale, binary data to the nand on your device.
While a standard file deletion just marks, a particular file is deleted, it generally does stay on the disk until another file is written over it writing tens or hundreds of gigabytes of nonsensical zero and one binary data on your phone storage guarantees that any remaining personal data On your phone’s device gets overwritten. The process can take a few hours, though, if you’ve got a significant amount of storage on your phone. That is, but it guarantees that your phone has been securely erased and is worth it for the peace of mind that it offers.
Of course, you should still factory reset your phone after wiping it clean using this method. So is it enough to just factory reset your Android phone before selling it on and while we will say it’s unlikely that almost anyone watching this video would be a potential Target for such an attack. It’S always a good idea to take precautionary measures to protect your data on the off chance that someone does decide to go. Rogue with your phone.
A factory reset on a modern Android phone is very effective at protecting you from Data Theft. However, we believe that Irving towards caution and running a secure white program, at least a few hours before turning your phone in for an upgrade or for a hot upcoming Android phone, is probably a small price to pay for being 100 %. Certain that your personal data remains well personal, if you want to take those extra precautionary measures for yourself, we’ll leave a link to the application we mentioned in this article down in the comments section below. But let me know if you’ve had any problems with data being recovered from your devices down in the comment section and I will catch you in the next one. .