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Ask Slashdot: Would You Use A Cellphone With A Kill Code?
Slashdot reader gordo3000 writes:
Given all the recent headlines about border patrol getting up close and personal with phones, I've been wondering why phone manufacturers don't offer a second emergency pin that you can enter that wipes all private information on the phone? In theory, it should be pretty easy to just input a different pin (or unlock pattern) that opens up a factory reset screen on the phone and in the background begins deleting all personal information.
I'd expect that same code could also lock out the USB port until it is finished deleting the data, to help prevent many of the tools they now have to copy out everything on your phone. This nicely prevents you from having to back up and wipe your phone before every trip but leaves you with a safety measure if you get harassed at the border.
It could be built into the operating system, added by the manufacturer, or perhaps sideloaded as a custom mod -- but that begs the question of whether it'd really be a popular feature. So leave your own thoughts in the comments. Would you use a cellphone with a kill code?
I'd expect that same code could also lock out the USB port until it is finished deleting the data, to help prevent many of the tools they now have to copy out everything on your phone. This nicely prevents you from having to back up and wipe your phone before every trip but leaves you with a safety measure if you get harassed at the border.
It could be built into the operating system, added by the manufacturer, or perhaps sideloaded as a custom mod -- but that begs the question of whether it'd really be a popular feature. So leave your own thoughts in the comments. Would you use a cellphone with a kill code?
Yes.
Why not have a second PIN that opens a sanitized, but seemingly fully normal, home page? Missing a few critical apps, or having versions signed into a different account.
It would be *very* easy to have smartphones with adequate security from all sorts of perspectives. Secure key storage, secure storage, secure communications, secure boot, secure containers, secure remote management, secure (multiple factor) authentication, secure arbitration of what hardware can access what memory etc. The thing is: if your target audience is largely 15 year old girls, then you probably have commercial priorities elsewhere.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I'll just avoid travelling to the US.
Put in a PIN code. Set the phone to wipe after 3 incorrect attempts.
When the phone goes to wipe itself, it just deletes the crypto key to the main storage, thereby rendering it completely scrambled in an instant. No need to lock out the Lightning port while this occurs, it happens too quickly.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
People will accidentally wipe the phones.
There would be 10 legitimate use and 10,000,000 acciddental customers with lost data and liability claims.
I, as a phone / OS provider, would fight this feature.
I, as a phone user, would fight this feature.
Imagine a prankster or a drunk friend or a child getting your phone and trying this out.
Well, you wipe your phone when trying to enter - it means that you have something to hide and should be detained and not allowed in.
Facebook and Apple already have backdoors for them. This is just a show of power and conditioning of sheep into giving up any notion of private data.
If they ask to see my phone I should see theirs.
The most unsuspicious way would be to have the smartphone selfdestroy itself by shorting the battery or by executing code that overheats the CPU when the appropriate PIN code is entered. This is the reason why I always buy Samsung smartphones: nobody would blame me if "accidentally" it catches fire
Please ask yourself: would you remember a pin you set half-year ago and never used it? Although most people will not use it (thus why invest in development), those that know it, 90%(so I won't repeat "most") will forget the wipe PIN and would not rememeber it when needed. You have to be extremely well organised+great memory to be able to use it.
I have it already on my own phone; it's a requirement that I change my security settings so that the entire phone is factory reset if the passcode is entered incorrectly a set number of times. I also need to change my PIN regularly, and to register the device with a central authentication server; AND the internal and SD card storage are both encrypted. The requirements came from my desire not to have another work phone to access my NHS emails, but to use my own handset. Since the NHS are so cautious about any unauthorised person having access to patient information, it is entirely understandable. It's inconvenient having to change my PIN or passphrase with the regularity they demand, and when I get a new handset it's a pain to re-register my device - but convenience is always an enemy to security.
WMD app on Android, similar apps on other devices. Hand over your phone, leave customs, borrow another phone, send a text and it's wiped. Also most phone carriers give you a web based service account that also includes a remote wipe function. Corporate Cell phone access and management tools also include this capability.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Availability of this feature would result in new regulations which make it illegal to nuke your phone when asked to hand it over to a border agent/law enforcement officer. Add something like 1 year in prison etc and the functionality is practically useless.
But don't memorize it, before crossing the border, and send it to yourself securely on another device not in your possession. That way you can swear that you don't know it and cannot obtain it. It becomes something you neither know or have. State that this is your standard travel policy for safety reasons.
You are in a foreign country.
Upload your data to a foreign server.
I recommend a one-time key for encryption.
Erase it from your phone.
Enter the U.S.A.
Retrieve the data. Erase it from server.
End of problem.
Avoids border hassles.
All perfectly legal.
18 USC 1503 : Federal Obstruction of Justice.
10 years in a Federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison.
Your new cellmate is named "Bubba".
Don't forget the data has not really gone. There is always a shadow, difficult to get at and needs very expensive equipment but its do able.
I can text a kill code from a trusted sender, e.g. my wife's cell. They turn on a siren, wipe, etc... https://www.avast.com/en-us/an...
I should put something clever here. Maybe someday.
Most people may not like having their phones perused, but they also don't mind terribly, and don't travel so often.
If you do mind, you already have two phones, one for home and one for traveling. That's a safer solution, even if you have to keep both updated.
The real problem will come when not having a Facebook account will make you lose your flight, marking you as a suspect element.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
The real issue is that you are storing sensitive information on a device on which you don't have root.
If you don't have root then how could you trust your phone to keep that data safe in the first place?
Also, the sensitive info that authorities are after are your phone book, your call history and your photos.
The phone should be configured to not store those on the phone itself, either not store them at all to have them on a secure server somewhere.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Anything designed for "war" can be hacked, or can accidentally go off. I'm happy with a reasonable level of security and a realistic understanding of the risks. Most phones provide the first and most users completely fail to get the second. Just give me a padlock that will keep out the vast majority of casual identity thieves.
Remember folks in the USA, you COULD then be charged with tampering with evidence or DESTROYING evidence if you use a kill code. A very slippery slope. Rather, you enter a code in that locks, the phone down, and the next time someone enters any other code than your rescind code, the phone wipes, that way YOU are not the one that wiped it, with L.E. did. However, I am sure they WILL still charge you with something as they will be P!ssed off!
In the United States if a border agent asks for your cellphone and you wipe it right there, you've just broken the law. You can now be charged with an obstruction of justice charge. Now if you wipe your phone on the flight or before you're interacting with the border agent, then you've done nothing. But once they ask for it, any actions you do to delete the information on that device is illegal.
There are a number of automatic backup apps which can run on a schedule. Many applications themselves have options to back up to cloud services. For those paranoid, several android phones have removable uSD cards which can be set to be the default location for application storage. If you're travelling and don't have the necessary network for backups, you can remove the uSD and store it somewhere unlikely to be found or searched - or just drop it in the mail to yourself on the way to the airport.
When interdictions at the airport became news, my first thought was to having a kill PIN. That would be better than a wipe and reset, as the whole process of re-downloading my apps from a fresh install, having to re-set some of my personal ringtones, custom keyboard, and logging back into apps can take close to an hour (Even if most of it is unattended).
What you're looking for is a dd-like mirror of the device which, afaik, does not exist for either platform. It's unlikely for iOS and most Android simply because you're talking about a backup which, for the barest devices, is going to be north of 12GB. Even on good WiFi to a local server that's going to be a long process, likely taking over an hour - easily three or more if you want to do a verification of the transfer (which you'd better do if you're about to wipe your phone). Phones with removable storage are an option, but even then you're talking multiple hours for backup and verification based on even the fastest cards.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Total destruction seems excessive. If your phone is (properly) encrypted, a simple deletion of the key is sufficient. I think a WIPE (Witness Immunization from Procurement of Evidence) PIN would be a fabulous addition to both Android and iOS.
If nothing else, the existence of such a PIN would stop law enforcement from requesting/requiring your PIN, as they could receive the wrong one.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
For those worried about hackers remotely wiping your phone - such a mechanism already exists. If you mis-enter your pin X times, most phones will automatically lock or wipe as an anti-theft protection. If you're concerted about a hacker entering your wipe code, you should be more concerned about the same hacker entering 5/10/12 incorrect PINs and locking you out or using the iOS or Android Find My Phone functionality to remotely wipe the phone.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I'd like a duress pin instead. It lets the phone function totally as normal, except it fires an email with my location, and an email that I'm being forced to unlock my phone to my lawyer or (for my work phone) my corporate legal dept. If I'm being forced to unlock my phone, I want to make it tough to disappear me, no matter what the circumstances are.
If you want, have it fire a user-defined script too, that way if you want to fry your crypto memory, have at it, or wipe your lastpass storage, or whatever.
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Our sales reps take factory wiped burner phones and laptops with them when they go on trips to the USA...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Wouldn't it be better to start holding our governments accountable to us, the people who elected the leaders of said governments, and the people who ultimately pay all their salaries? Yeah, I know, corporations own the governments, you can't fight city hall, etc. But really, fuck this nonsense of either taking inconvenient, expensive, extraordinary, and unreliable countermeasures to protect ourselves from our own elected and paid for governments, or taking it up the a** from same! It's time to start organizing and fighting for change, the way civil rights activists did decades ago. Our civil rights are being violated, and it's time to politely but firmly say "No!" to sitting at the back of our own goddamned bus!
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Our sales reps take factory wiped burner phones and laptops with them when they go on trips to the USA...
How long will it be before 'clean' devices like that will be sufficient cause for being denied entry? For the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" crowd running things now, anything suggesting that you value your own privacy enough to take precautions, makes you at least an object of suspicion, and possibly even a criminal or a terrorist.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
If you're worried about the border patrol, it seems pretty easy to know when you're approaching a border. You can just wipe the phone in advance using the built in feature to wipe the phone and return it to the factory settings.
The whole thing gets more complicated if we're assuming the police just start confiscating phones of random people without a warrant, but I'd imagine that would face a stronger 4th amendment challenge. And really, at that point, I don't think a kill switch would be good enough. I'd want manufacturers to rethink the whole security design, probably limiting the information stored on the phone in the first place.
The Nokia 3010 just came back on the market for $50. This sucker will have a battery life for MONTHS. If all you need is a phone and you travel and don't want the bad man looking at your email just carry a crappy phone that you don't mind losing and forward all your phone calls to that other number.
I'd love to see the look on the security person's face when they try to figure that device out. It'll be insanely hilarious.
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
With all the warrantless border searches happening, I wondered the same thing recently. Then I thought of another solution that would do the same thing. Something that is already built into smartphones.
I have my iphone set to wipe after 10 invalid attempts. So the next time I cross the border, I'm going to enter 9 invalid attempts before I arrive at the border crossing. If ask for my passcode, I'll supply an invalid code; bam it's wiped first try!
I was thinking something along the same lines...not "would you...?" but "do you really need to....?"
You can be all protectionist about your personal data to the point that you'd rather nuke it on the phone than let a government official see it, but that throws up other issues. Once it's gone, it's gone, so how do you convince someone that you just deleted a load of personal photos that you're very protective of, and not some horrible and incriminating terror-related material?
Because I'd lose my Candy Crush high score.
Have gnu, will travel.
1. Seven photographs of some artwork at a museum in Portland, Oregon
2. Seventy phone numbers of family, friends, my drycleaners, my welding supply places, my jewelry wholsaler, my doctor, my dentist, my eyedoctor, my friends (none foreign), my church, my electronics parts wholsaler, my sewing machine repairman, seventeen fabric stores between Portland, Oregon and Bellingham, Washington, a few scrap metal distributiers, my washing machine repairman, my electrician, the local movie theater's movie times phone, LedSupply in Vermont, and other such phones
3. Nothing on the calendar except a dentist appointment two years ago for a crown replacement
4. One google maps location for a Mill End Fabrics in Portland, Oregon
5. One google maps location for the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention in Bellingham, Washington
6. A few text messages from my bank indicating Debit Card withdrawals taken at the Community Food Coop here in Bellingham, Washington.
7. Browser history consisting mostly of weather forecasts for both Bellingham, Washington and Portland, Oregon as well as flight times for a round trip from Portland, Oregon to Newark, New Jersey to go to mom's memorial service
And that's about it. If customs/ICE/FBI/NSA/FCC/IRS/FDA/DHS/HEW/OSS or whatever knows that I patronise Whole 9 Yards Fabrics in Portland, Oregon or volunteer at the Spark Museum in Bellingham, Washington, or have my washing machine fixed by Bodie Appliance in Belingham, Washington or I had 10,000 dollars of electrical work done by Eric Benson Electrical Service in Bellingham, Washington, or bought 700 dollars of upholstery fabric from Mill End Store in Portland Oregon to make my home made clothing that you all can see on www.allyn.com; or that I call my sister in Belmont, Massachusetts at 9 AM on Christmas morning, then fine. I don't think I should care.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
1. I don't use a smartphone, because they are proven time and time again to be easily exploited and compromised, even if you're careful
2. I wouldn't buy a smartphone, for the reasons stated in #1
3. If I found I had no choice but to own a smartphone, all Internet access would be disabled by intentional misconfigure of network settings (and NO, I don't care)
4. #1 through #3 having been said: If I was travelling internationally, I would NEVER bring my actual phone with me, I would get a cheap prepaid phone, put nothing at all on it, and if it was taken to be 'examined' by customs officials or law enforcement, I'd destroy the SIM card and throw the phone away immediately, and get a new one if necessary.
Seriously, folks, if you're going to travel internationally, leave your real phone at home and buy a cheap porepaid phone to take with you. Then the whole issue of having your privacy invaded and/or your phone compromised and/or your phone confiscated becomes moot. Would cost you all of $50 at most plus however many minutes you want to put on it.
I was with you until you said it brings up a wiping screen. I doubt very much that the feds/TSA really give a crap that your last facebook post said you think Trump is an Ahole, otherwise they'd be detaining about 50% of everyone travelling, but the moment they see your phone is wiping itself they will assume you must have something to far more significant to hide.
A much better bet would be to have a removeable SD card and/or a password that silently logs in to a second environment which just has a bunch of bland work-related texts and emails and no social media accounts or anything else.
I can't believe there isn't already an app for this.
Physical wipes are worthless because they take way too long and expose users to liability WRT destruction of evidence.
What I would like to see are mobile computers sporting encrypted file systems designed for deniability. Availability of data depends on key(s) entered by users.
You could elect to enter a "duress" key that only reveals bullshit.
Or you could enter your normal key yet elect not to enter additional keys to reveal additional data. For example a work key that unlocks proprietary data related to a current project.
Everything would be designed for deniability. Without access to encryption key number and extent of encrypted volumes let alone data they contain would be totally indistinguishable from background.
The ideal system would be a computer that always boots from protected read-only volume without any field upgradable persistently stored firmware.
Upgrading core OS requires throwing an actual switch to make overwrite physically possible. A mode that concurrently restarts system if still running and physically disconnects all user storage.
Coupled with an encrypted filesystem you could safely reboot and reuse the same device for multiple purposes without having to ever worry about candy crush selling out your business secrets to the highest bidder even after candy crush has successfully completely rooted your device.
Structures like this would provide real security with real freedom not compromise both by relying on indefensible houses of cards like secureboot.
The problem with your plan is it would be obstruction. You are destroying information the government has requested you provide obstructing their investigation. If you wipe the phone prior to the government requesting it you've done nothing wrong.
If you're concerned about the government accessing your cell phone or computer while you cross the border, wipe it and restore it at your destination.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Rather than having a PIN that erases everything, just make one that unlocks a totally different filesystem.
You've got 32 GB of space on your phone, so dedicate 8 GB of that to an alternate system (and make sure the phone doesn't say 32 GB on the outside) and when you give it the alternate PIN you log into the alternate setup that has no access whatsoever to the main setup. You can even install apps and stuff in this alternate setup, so it looks real but it only has the things you've deemed to be OK.
This wouldn't fool the FBI using forensic software on your phone, but it would stop the border patrol guy who wants to poke around your phone, as long as such things don't become common knowledge and he starts checking sizes vs. published specs and such.
You could even set up multiple PINs -- PIN #1 gives the main phone, #2 gives alternate setup #1, #3 gives alternate setup #2, #4 erases everything if entered three times in a row ...
A Cydia developer could make a fortune with this. Side note, it wouldn't surprise me if airports where doing more than charging your phone with those USB ports below the waiting seats.
I'm as vanilla as they come. Retired US Navy officer, don't speed, do drugs, or have any other bad habits. My worst bad habit is drinking too much Diet Pepsi. I cannot imagine that I would EVER need a cell phone, or a computer, or a tablet, with a "kill code".
But you can never imagine it happening until it does, at which time it's too late. Yes, I'd like for Android and iOS and Windows and *nix to offer operating systems with an option of a duress password that invokes a "super vanilla, bare-bones" experience. A smart phone that, if you enter the duress code, reverts to be just a "POTS"; "Plain Old Telephone System". (Better yet, emulate a Nokia with only a handful of basic contacts.) A laptop that, if the duress password is entered, boot into a functional-but-contains-nothing desktop with no network access to ANYTHING. A tablet that would erase the local memory and password list.
We'll never NEED this, of course.
Until we do.
http://nokiamuseum.info/nokia-... The main reason I'm hanging on to it is that it's on a grandfathered $100 per year plan from Virgin Mobile Canada. It's pre-paid, and unused balance carries over. I don't use it much. I try to do my few long-distance calls on it. Although the rates may look high, that's the only way I can use my accumulated balance.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
I already do.
Modern phones generally have full encryption using strong crypto. Destroying a random 256-bit key is a lot easier than wiping gigs of storage.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
create encrypted partitions and encrypted redactions on a phone - realize that the law says that you must unlock and allow the HS officer to look at and copy data from your phone, if there are hidden or encrypted partitions in the phone or redacted information - that would require an order from a judge to compel you to decrypt it.
I could be tempted to use a kill code with a cell phone. I think operatives of certain agencies have something like that.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Code to kill it - 12345. Nobody would think of that.