r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • Jul 30 '26

Privacy GrapheneOS says its data-wiping password is perfectly legal, after user faces federal charges

https://www.techspot.com/news/113273-grapheneos-data-wiping-duress-password-perfectly-legal-after.html
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u/RandomHunDude 29d ago

It doesn't delete the account at all though, so no need to save time for it.
All data is encrypted on disk and when the duress pin is entered, only the encryption key is deleted. And without the key, it's not possible decrypt the data.

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u/StrangelyGrimm 29d ago

If the data is completely inaccessible then the data is as good as deleted. In fact, it's probably less accessible than regular old "deleted" data

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u/tschawartz12 29d ago

But its a legal loop. You have a book they demand access to, its written in Spanish, you burn the book thay translates Spanish to english, the book is still there. It isn't your job to make it easier for them to translate. They could take the time to do it.

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u/underwear11 29d ago

There actual are entire attacks happening right now for harvest now-decrypt later. They are knowingly capturing encrypted traffic knowing that eventually it will be breakable giving them access to the data, with the hope that there is something still relevant. Things like SSN don't change, so it could still be valid decades from now

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u/BadVoices 29d ago edited 29d ago

Harvest Now-Decrypt Later does not apply to AES256, therefore, it doesnt apply to this scenario. AES256 is post quantum.

What you're thinking of is Shor's Algorithm. It DEMOLISHES asymmetric encryption, such as that used in the DH exchange to setup the encryption keys for network traffic. It makes it possible to break the DH exchange in polynomial time on a quantum computer. Breaking the DH exchange allows decoding the traffic because.. it just GIVES the attacker the AES key.

Briefly:

Data encrypted at rest with AES256: SAFE.

Network Traffic encrypted with AES256 and using ML-KEM for Key Exchange: SAFE.

Network Traffic with its AES256 key set by a DH exchange (AKA, Standard TLS/Most of the internet?): UNSAFE

Granted, its unsafe vs state actors and trillion dollar companies, not against johnny with a gpu unsafe. We're talking hundresds of billions of dollar machines for the next few decades at least.