And so it begins.
By the way, they prefer to be called cybernetic organisms.
Posted on 05/21/2015 7:46:40 PM PDT by Swordmaker
An estimated 630 million phones fail to purge contacts, e-mails, images, and more. LINK ONLY DUE TO COPYRIGHT LIMITATIONS:
Ars Technica — Flawed Android factory reset leaves crypto and login keys ripe for picking
And so it begins.
By the way, they prefer to be called cybernetic organisms.
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What a dumb mistake.
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Such an amazing problem to still have on fully encrypted Android phones and with people (thinking) they are safely wiping them before selling them.
People will need to destroy these phones and not sell them.
Also amazing is that so few Android phones can ever have security fixes or upgrades. The manufacturers want you to simply “buy new.”
Apple phones get free fixes for four or more years.
According to the article this applies to Android from version 2.3 all the way up to version 4.3 which is the highest they've tested. . . but I wonder if they tested Android 5.0 Lollipop, if they'd find the same thing? If they'd found such a huge flaw in the older versions and fixed it, they are bound by law to have reported this flaw in the older versions, and they have NOT. I suspect they did not find and fix it in 5.0.
However you look at it, there are according to them at least 630 million devices at risk! Android 4.4 Kitkat is at about 40% adoption and 5.0 Lollipop is around 4%. . . so over 50% of Android users are for certain vulnerable.
I am pinging the Apple users to this article. . . a lot of them do use Android devices and need to know they need to find a secure method to wipe the data off their devices before they dispose of them. I suggest you ping the Windows/Microsoft people as well for the same reason. ShadowAce, ditto for you to catch the Linux users.
Now that this is known—and apparently it is fairly easy to get the data off of a factory reset phone or tablet—you just know the hackers and criminals will be mining the phones for the gems and gold that will pay off big time.
I’d like to be the first to welcome our Kate Upton and Jessica Biehl robotic Overladies, programmed for endless sex with humanoids, as long as they have ‘kill switches’ so they don’t break my **** off.
I never turn in a phone when buying a new one, for tbis reason alone.
I toss em in my IT bone pile or I destroy them beyond recognition.
Maybe, maybe not. As one of the commenters on the ArsTechnica page wrote:
This research proves many (most?) android phones are vulnerable. It does not prove that other phones are safe. Has anyone given the same level of study and analysis to wiped iPhone or Windows phone or Blackberry and found them secure?Apple and Microsoft would do well to demonstrate their (presumably) better results for the same challenge.
> People will need to destroy these phones and not sell them.
Correct. It's like trying to get a few bucks by selling an old computer that includes its hard drive. You'd be astonished how few people think to destroy the hard drive.
> Also amazing is that so few Android phones can ever have security fixes or upgrades. The manufacturers want you to simply “buy new.” Apple phones get free fixes for four or more years.
That's one reason I've got an iPhone rather than an Android. I want the security fixes to come to me and pester me to update. If I had to go and find them, I, like most other people, would tend to forget.
Thanks to Swordmaker for the heads-up!!
And let's see who can come up with a demonstration regarding post-reset data recovery on other (non-Android) phones.
Haha...me either...Someday when we are long gone our “bone pile” will be discovered
Funny. I still have a couple Apple II, an 8088, a 46DX66 and on and on....
Lollipop is a bad joke at best.
Verizon loaded it on my S5 as a
‘required upgrade’ and it stinks.
Thank you for the heads up. My son has an Android phone and tablet. I use Windows.
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