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CyanogenMod 13.0 Release 1 Released (androidpolice.com)
An anonymous reader writes: CyanogenMod 13.0 Release 1 is now available as the Android community's first release based off Google's 6.0 Marshmallow. [...]
Not long after Google released the code for Android Marshmallow, CyanogenMod started rolling out nightly builds. Now, CyanogenMod has officially released its first Snapshot release for those looking for more stable development. Many of the improvements detail changes to the privacy settings. For example, CyanogenMod 13.0 has removed encrypted Whisperpush text messaging, and Privacy Guard has been altered to comply with Marshmallow's new permission model. Some other changes include a new AOSP SMS/MMS application, memory screen that shows memory usage over a selected period of time, new controls for the status bar icons, and an enhanced Snap camera app based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon camera. A Cyanogen Apps pack is not yet available, but should be coming in a week or so.
Not long after Google released the code for Android Marshmallow, CyanogenMod started rolling out nightly builds. Now, CyanogenMod has officially released its first Snapshot release for those looking for more stable development. Many of the improvements detail changes to the privacy settings. For example, CyanogenMod 13.0 has removed encrypted Whisperpush text messaging, and Privacy Guard has been altered to comply with Marshmallow's new permission model. Some other changes include a new AOSP SMS/MMS application, memory screen that shows memory usage over a selected period of time, new controls for the status bar icons, and an enhanced Snap camera app based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon camera. A Cyanogen Apps pack is not yet available, but should be coming in a week or so.
For some reason the CM releases have had immense problems with implementing full-disk encryption over the years. It just doesn't work, not even on popular flagship models.
On my Galaxy S3 (CM11) I was once able to encrypt my phone, but it would only allow the use of either a PIN or password – and CM also wiped the user data clean one day by itself. The use of a password is very much desirable per se, but the thing is you'd have to enter it every time you unlock the screen. A PIN is as secure as leaving your phone with a post-it note on it with the actual PIN written on it.
After trying the new CM13 nightlies on my Galaxy S5, I'm still having problems with full-disk encryption. This time around it won't encrypt at all, and even if it would, the aforementioned limitations with the password/PIN are still present. In the newer version you theoretically could use a pattern too, but it's still not secure enough (nor does the whole damn encryption work to begin with).
It's been discussed for several years now how people could have a secure FDE key and a also use a pattern or PIN to unlock the screen. For some god-knows-why reason the password has also been limited to 16 characters in the official Android documentation and nobody came up with the idea to actually increase that. Having experimented with encryption on my Android/CM devices, I have to say that security never really was a key feature in the whole damn ecosystem.
-SR