this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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Don't use biometrics and if you do, power off your phone before it's siezed.
PSA hitting your power button (5)? times in a row (however many it takes to bring up the SOS screen) on an iPhone will disable biometric login until you’ve entered your password again.
You can also hold to power down but not actually go through with it, I believe.
That does not encrypt your storage. It simply disables the biometric authentication methods. Which means they can see your stuff if they get into the phone via a exploit.
iOS encrypts the storage by default. Don't know about android but I'm sure if not by default it can be enabled.
I never said anything about the phone not being encrypted by default. I am talking about the emergency mode iOS devices have.
You literally said 'that doesn't encrypt your storage'. I've read some other comments of yours about it being decrypted after entering a pin or passwords in memory...that's not how it works (again at least in iOS), it's managed by hardware. Basically a chip enters your password for you. So no, an attacker can't access your storage, it's still encrypted, or your password that easily.
I responded to that with:
That emergency mode that is activated by hitting the power button 5 times does not encrypt the storage. It merely disables the biometric authentication methods and possibly other things related to security, but it does not encrypt the storage. The phone stays in the AFU state and therefore the decryption keys are still somewhere in the hardware chip's memory.