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This wouldn’t really improve security. Only the secure hardware is secure from physical attack. The user data is encrypted and put on memory that isn’t physical
by varenc 8y ago
This wouldn’t really improve security. Only the secure hardware is secure from physical attack. The user data is encrypted and put on memory that isn’t physically secure.
If you have a way to decrypt that data, you can just physically remove that memory, copy that data, and break the encryption on it. If people could break encryption, they wouldn’t go about updating the firmware and triggering a potential data wipe in the first place. In short, if you don’t trust encryption you’ve already lost.
- kerng 8y agoThe thing I wanted to highlight is that time works against encryption. What is encrypted with today's most powerful and thorough understanding of crypto, will possibly be easily decrypted a few years or a decade down the road. So in addition to deleting the keys, I would always wipe the data itself also.
- varenc 8y agoI agree that time works against crypto, but one point I wanted to make is that the attacker can easily prevent the data wipe from happening. Just physically copy the encrypted user data, or discount that memory from the device. It’s hard for me to an imagine a state funded attacker that wouldn’t just prevent the data wipe if they cared. I agree at least there’s an extreme edge case where this would protect you from a simultaneously very advanced but also negligent attacker, but that seems so rare that it’s unconcerning to me. Feels a bit like adding an extra luggage lock to a bank vault since its still better to have more security afterall...