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A comment on Amazon Echo Dot does not wipe personal content after factory reset. Parent comment

Re:Amazon Echo Dot does not wipe personal content after fact... by croon on Saturday July 24, 2021 @06:33PM (#27944969)
https://www.apple.com/ca/business-docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pd...

> The “Erase all content and settings” option in Settings obliterates all the keys in Effaceable Storage, rendering all user data on the device cryptographically inaccessible.

Semantics debate around whether leaving data practically inaccessible is the same as removing it, but considering where we are, I'd say it isn't.

Granted, this is from 2018, but I doubt the defaults and concept have changed.

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Re:Amazon Echo Dot does not wipe personal content after fact... by Retric on Saturday July 24, 2021 @07:21PM (#27945218)
Securely deleting the keys is safer than simply practically inaccessible. That suggests their is some impractical way to access the data, care to suggest what that might be?
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Re:Amazon Echo Dot does not wipe personal content after fact... by emsy on Saturday July 24, 2021 @08:43PM (#27945634)
Overwriting flash with 0s. To be fair I think the iPhone should grant you that option (MacOs does). But to suggesting that leaving an encrypted block of data on the device is on the same level as leaving unencrypted blocks of data lying around is foolish.
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Re:Amazon Echo Dot does not wipe personal content after fact... by Retric on Saturday July 24, 2021 @09:58PM (#27946010)
Overwriting flash data isn’t going to give you access to the data. It might in theory be more secure, but I would favor encryption at rest rather than simply overwriting plain text.
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Re:Amazon Echo Dot does not wipe personal content after fact... by jfrunyon on Saturday July 24, 2021 @08:43PM (#27945635)
Encryption can be (and in fact certainly will be, given enough time) broken.
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Re:Amazon Echo Dot does not wipe personal content after fact... by Retric on Saturday July 24, 2021 @09:55PM (#27945995)
It is possible in theory to recover some information from overwriting flash data with zeros, it’s also possible in theory for well designed modern encryption to be broken but neither of those are guaranteed at this point.
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Re:Amazon Echo Dot does not wipe personal content after fact... by jfrunyon on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @12:29PM (#27974343)
Essentially every encryption scheme in history has been broken. It's a bit silly to think that "well designed modern" makes it safe. The others were all well designed and modern at one time, too. The only scheme that's truly unbreakable is a one-time pad and that's... well... not really practically useable.

Personally, that's not a risk that I would care about (especially in the context of an Echo Dot or even an iPhone), but deleting the keys will not be better than inaccessible forever.

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