The android system uses encryption to encrypt user data. When a factory reset is performed, the secure element, the TEE, as well as the encryption headers are wiped. As destroying one of them prevents deriving the encryption key, and that secure element can reliably zero its slots, the data is effectively rendered wiped as it cannot be read without the encryption key which can no longer be derived.

I get that but you have two sources saying different things which is kinda weird when the point of the OS is extreme security paranoia.

No, it's a completely baseless fabrication. We haven't provided inconsistent information about this. You made up something to attack the project and to personally attack the founder.

Sure Daniel.

The point of GrapheneOS is not based in paranoia, and they have not published any conflicting information on how wiping works.

I won't get too much into the history of the project, but the founder has a history of inventing stalkers and hit squads that are allegedly being sent to their door.

Happens every couple of years, just ask the CEO of CopperheadOS, Louis Rossmann, or the myriad of people from the AOSP development scene.

Those are outrageous fabrications as part of your serial lying and bullying towards the founder of GrapheneOS. He has been repeatedly targeted with swatting attacks aimed at killing him. It's verifiable from Toronto police records available upon request. That's an objective fact and pushing outright fabrications about it gets you nowhere.

Rossmann is a Kiwi Farms user with a career based around serially dishonest rant videos attacking people and companies. He's not a credible source at all. He thoroughly lied about what had happened because he was scared he would be exposed for what he'd done and decided to harm as much as he could. We had no intention of publicly exposing his abuse but he decided to do this anyway. He'd publicly live streamed himself engaging in vile bullying towards our founder who he'd openly helped direct harassment towards with months of public jabs and support for harassment content. His video published later the same day was to make excuses for what he'd done. He lied about no longer using the OS, lied about what had happened and nearly everything else about it.

Good luck with Moto, Daniel. Hope they don't look at you the wrong way, or you'll invent swatters and stalkers again.

You realize you being this persistent with your butthurt comments against GOS makes you look like the one you are trying to accuse Micay from being and only proves Micay right.

You clearly have a personal problem with GOS/Micay, but I dont know what you aim to benefit from your comments here.

I also have a personal problem with GOS people attitude. This is one on many reasons I switched to iPhones despite I never used them before and I was a loyal user of GOS since 2023.

I strongly dislike how they treat alternative opinions and stating uncomfortable truth about the inevitable locking down of Google ecosystem in terms of requiring higher integrity levels for bank/gov apps.

Micay is always right because the only time he admitted being wrong he still lied. He never stepped down, took any breaks or anything like that. He still the lead of GOS, he runs all of their accounts, despite his best efforts the writing style is exactly the same as 8-9 years ago when he got on my radar.

I've thankfully avoided getting myself in the blast radius of his "X sent a swat team to my door" attacks, but I've seen the shit he pulls. This is unhealthy and I hope that the opportunity to work with Moto gets him in the right state of mind to stop this shit.

He stepped down as lead developer. He doesn't run all of the accounts, the accounts are shared accounts. Multiple project members have access to it.

If you had gotten into the history, you would know none of these claims are accurate.

If these claims had validity, the world would have known about it due to media coverage + USMS/HSI making a press release post investigation and arrest. Thus, this is rumor BS to spur up animosity against an open source, privacy/security first, project. My question is; what is your aim with this post?

No, that's completely untrue. We've provided clear, consistent and accurate information about how data is wiped. Factory reset, device admin wipe and duress PIN/password all use the same mechanisms to prevent recovering any data.

Disk encryption headers, hardware keystore keys and secure element data are each securely erased. Each of those mechanisms prevents deriving the key encryption keys which prevents ever recovering the data. Secure element data isn't stored on the SSD and prevents recovering data via an earlier image of the SSD. We implemented doing all 3 of those before reboot to recovery for device admin wipe and we used the same code for duress PIN/password wipe. We filed an Android security bug for device admin wipe and convinced them to add the hardware keystore wipe before reboot to recovery, but we still add the other 2 forms of wiping there ourselves.

Your claim is a completely baseless fabrication and a very poor excuse to start engaging in the usual inaccurate personal attacks towards our founder.

> GrapheneOS provides users with the ability to set a duress PIN/Password that will irreversibly wipe the device (along with any installed eSIMs) once entered anywhere where the device credentials are requested (on the lockscreen, along with any such prompt in the OS).

From your feature overview. Wiping the device means zeroing everything where userdata may exist, not wiping the keystore. I'm sure wiping the keys is technically okay but how many more inconsistencies like that do you have?

That's not an inconsistency but rather the only way to reliably wipe user data. It would be completely broken to attempt wiping data by zeroing the userdata partition. That wouldn't get rid of all the data from the SSD even with secure erase commands for overwriting it.

A modern SSD has both static and dynamic wear leveling. An SSD redirects writes to the free blocks with the least wear and also moves around used blocks to free up the least heavily written parts of the storage. An SSD with a proper whole drive secure erase implements it by securely wiping keys.

I understand all of this. But wiping means what it does, and "removing the keys of an encrypted partition" is not the same. Please be more forthcoming in the documentation.

Sure Daniel

This is just pedantic and dishonest. 'Wiping data' as a concept very much so includes cryptographically scrambling it and losing the key.

No, you are redefining "wipe". A copy of the key could be stored in malicious hardware, ready for the authorities to copy.

The trust you people put in Google and Motorola is surprising.