This isn't particularly interesting, though the steps to get access are nicely done. Most devices of that era including many Android phones lacked any sort of

This isn't particularly interesting, though the steps to get access are nicely done. Most devices of that era including many Android phones lacked any sort of secure enclave for tamper proof secret storage or encryption. I believe the early Echo stored the wifi password using a weak block cipher and a fixed key, like Kindles. Given the password needs to be eventually decrypted in software, any sort of encryption like this is effectively obfuscation. Physical access is far, far worse! I think folks forget how much security innovation there has been, and become accessible to consumers, in the last decade. It wasn't too long ago that SSL was considered a luxury.