5 ms·

> pinging back to Google and then working I still have a bricked Android phone from nonsense like that. If you: 1. Factory reset the phone while not logged in

by hansvm 2y ago

> pinging back to Google and then working I still have a bricked Android phone from nonsense like that. If you: 1. Factory reset the phone while not logged in to the last Google account on the phone 2. Have the Google account invalidated (e.g., using an identity verification app on a temp noogler account, ...) You'll never be able to access the phone again. The "factory reset" maintains some internal state despite a scary message on the screen promising everything is deleted and asking if that's really what you want, and it'll require the last working password. Alright ... annoying, buggy (the fact that there are two factory resets and one doesn't reset the device is a problem; either fix or delete the broken one, or make the scary message scarier), but fine in my case. It checks that password against Google's servers though instead of the local hash, and it doesn't even matter if you know the password; the fact that the account is inactive prevents you from accessing the phone.

wkat4242 2y ago
That's an anti theft feature. Intended to make the phone useless to a thief. It doesn't work very well, thieves manage to get around it somehow (not so much with Apple's version) so it ends up annoying the users more than it does deter thieves. Apple is really really difficult about getting these unlocked. The carriers can't do it, you have to show them proof of purchase and have an enterprise support contract. With Google the carriers can just do it usually. I managed a fleet of mobiles at work for a while, this is how I know. It often happened that colleagues returned a phone without unlocking it.
- kube-system 2y ago
  It is a very good thing that Apple is tough about it, given the high value of the devices, and how people carry them around in public. I very much want my devices to be useless to thieves.
  - powersnail 2y ago
    I want to know whether this actually deters thieves. Anecdotally, from what I heard, it seems that phone stealing is very much still a thing in areas with active pickpocketing.
    - kube-system 2y ago
      It is not as bad as it used to be... Apple phones are only good for parts, which isn't much. I'd guess pickpockets typically can't tell what kind of phone you have before they take it, and Androids, being the exploitable mishmash of stuff they usually are, often can be unlocked. In the US I am not worried about people taking my phone even in sketchy areas. I'm sure they'd much rather have my wallet or other valuables.
      - smileybarry 2y ago
        Even then, Apple also bind (an increasingly larger amount of) component IDs to the motherboard, so nowadays a stolen device can't (really) be used for parts either. (The display will not authenticate and Face ID & HDR won't work, in addition to a message showing that in Settings) And to answer the obvious repair question -- yes, parts can be rebound to other motherboards etc., they just need iPhone Activation to pass first.
    - varjag 2y ago
      When five years ago thieves broke into my sons' class locker room, they stole all android phones and cash but didn't bother to take iphones. So yes it works or at least it did back then.
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        This isn't really consistent with the theft statistics, e.g. 68.6% of stolen phones are iPhones[1] (in the UK where they have ~44% market share). This is presumably because of higher resale value etc., but the premise that nobody cares to steal them anymore evidently hasn't panned out. [1] https://www.loveitcoverit.com/news/changing-world/mobile-phone-theft-a-new-crimewave/ https://www.loveitcoverit.com/news/changing-world/mobile-pho...
        varjag 2y ago
        I'm sorry that the reality in a locker room of a Norwegian high school is not consistent with British statistics.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    It's still not clear how this requires Apple to do anything or why it should have anything to do with any cloud service. The IMEI is burned into the phone. They should definitely make it hard to change the IMEI; but they do. If the phone is stolen then the IMEI gets reported as stolen and anyone who tries to activate the phone with a wireless carrier gets caught. Why does Apple or Google need to inconvenience people who forget their passwords or encounter the conglomerate's bugs?
    - meindnoch 2y ago
      IMEI blacklisting is not worldwide. The phone can still be used in other countries. Also, rogue carrier employees are selling IMEI blacklist removal as a side gig on the black market.
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        Isn't this the same problem either way? The enterprising criminal can take a low level job at Apple rather than a low level job at a carrier, which is presumably one of the reasons it hasn't actually worked. And if the problem is that each country is using a different IMEI blacklist then that seems like an obvious thing to fix. There are already treaties and agreements which is how the global phone network operates to begin with, or you could have US law enforcement set up a system to submit the IMEI to each of the individual blacklists.
        elzbardico 2y ago
        I trust apple to have more intelligent audit controls on their employees than the average carrier. And the calculation for the carrier is different. There's a inherent incentive on unblocking a phone for the carrier, as this means a billable contract. For Apple there's a inherent incentive in being known as having devices hard to unblock and thus, presumably less attractive for thieves.
        kube-system 2y ago
        > The enterprising criminal can take a low level job at Apple rather than a low level job at a carrier To my knowledge, Apple has not had any insider compromise of activation lock. This is why criminals try to phish the credentials from the victim instead.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    Yes, here in Barcelona which is pretty much pickpocket central, it's always funny to see the tourists going around with their big iPhone XL sticking way out of their back pocket. At first I used to tell them (the way you would when someone goes around with their backpack wide open) but people were usually like 'mind your own business' so yeah. Better to let them find out the hard way then.
- nottorp 2y ago
  > thieves manage to get around it somehow There are vulnerabilities. Some years ago when this was a new feature I got an android phone to use for development for someone. I just generated a new google account on it and promptly forgot the new email and pass. Time to return it: surprise, it wanted the previous account to log in after a factory reset. I ended up keeping it and paying for it. A few months later, after a weekend of googling, I found instructions on how to bypass it by using some vulnerability in the browser invoked in the initial set up, got to a browser window with an address bar, used it to download and install some apk with an older version of some system service, and used that to bypass the lockdown. Of course, it's probably much harder than that now. But it's doable.
- hansvm 2y ago
  I get why the feature exists, but it's my humble opinion that a "brick your device" button shouldn't exist. Repeating myself, some alternatives with similar levels of antitheft whil being much more pleasant for the user: - Don't enable that kind of reset functionality if that kind of antitheft is enabled - Warn the user about the potential bricked device, and require an additional confirmation - Don't require a ping to Google servers when you can verify account ownership just via a matched password hash Antitheft is fine and dandy, but the implementation is bad.
kube-system 2y ago
That's Factory Reset Protection. You can turn it off in settings, if you don't want that security feature. But yes, factory reset on Android phones only wipes the user data partition. Your phone has other things that don't necessarily get reset under a factory reset too, for instance: eSIMs (which is useful that it doesn't, in my experience)
userbinator 2y ago
"Factory reset" is a misnomer, a true factory reset would completely erase the internal storage and replace it with a clean copy of the OS. If that phone is based on a Mediatek SoC, I believe a true reset is possible - look up SPFlashTool and read about this useful exploit: https://tinyhack.com/2021/01/31/dissecting-a-mediatek-bootrom-exploit/ https://tinyhack.com/2021/01/31/dissecting-a-mediatek-bootro...
gblargg 2y ago
Wow, I didn't know Android phones were susceptible to this. Apple did this to a phone I had but I assumed Google couldn't since there are so many manufacturers with varying setups.
alpaca128 2y ago
Sounds like "Find My" on iPhones which is apparently meant as theft protection: as long as it's enabled the device will not accept activation with any other account even after a factory reset as long as the owner doesn't input their password and disable the feature. A lot of buyers of used iPhones and Macbooks find that out the hard way, often because the owners don't even know about that. And actual thieves don't need to care about it as long as they find a buyer who doesn't know about it either.

by hansvm 2y ago

wkat4242 2y ago

That's an anti theft feature. Intended to make the phone useless to a thief. It doesn't work very well, thieves manage to get around it somehow (not so much with Apple's version) so it ends up annoying the users more than it does deter thieves. Apple is really really difficult about getting these unlocked. The carriers can't do it, you have to show them proof of purchase and have an enterprise support contract. With Google the carriers can just do it usually. I managed a fleet of mobiles at work for a while, this is how I know. It often happened that colleagues returned a phone without unlocking it.

kube-system 2y ago
It is a very good thing that Apple is tough about it, given the high value of the devices, and how people carry them around in public. I very much want my devices to be useless to thieves.
- powersnail 2y ago
  I want to know whether this actually deters thieves. Anecdotally, from what I heard, it seems that phone stealing is very much still a thing in areas with active pickpocketing.
  - kube-system 2y ago
    It is not as bad as it used to be... Apple phones are only good for parts, which isn't much. I'd guess pickpockets typically can't tell what kind of phone you have before they take it, and Androids, being the exploitable mishmash of stuff they usually are, often can be unlocked. In the US I am not worried about people taking my phone even in sketchy areas. I'm sure they'd much rather have my wallet or other valuables.
    - smileybarry 2y ago
      Even then, Apple also bind (an increasingly larger amount of) component IDs to the motherboard, so nowadays a stolen device can't (really) be used for parts either. (The display will not authenticate and Face ID & HDR won't work, in addition to a message showing that in Settings) And to answer the obvious repair question -- yes, parts can be rebound to other motherboards etc., they just need iPhone Activation to pass first.
  - varjag 2y ago
    When five years ago thieves broke into my sons' class locker room, they stole all android phones and cash but didn't bother to take iphones. So yes it works or at least it did back then.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      This isn't really consistent with the theft statistics, e.g. 68.6% of stolen phones are iPhones[1] (in the UK where they have ~44% market share). This is presumably because of higher resale value etc., but the premise that nobody cares to steal them anymore evidently hasn't panned out. [1] https://www.loveitcoverit.com/news/changing-world/mobile-phone-theft-a-new-crimewave/ https://www.loveitcoverit.com/news/changing-world/mobile-pho...
      - varjag 2y ago
        I'm sorry that the reality in a locker room of a Norwegian high school is not consistent with British statistics.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  It's still not clear how this requires Apple to do anything or why it should have anything to do with any cloud service. The IMEI is burned into the phone. They should definitely make it hard to change the IMEI; but they do. If the phone is stolen then the IMEI gets reported as stolen and anyone who tries to activate the phone with a wireless carrier gets caught. Why does Apple or Google need to inconvenience people who forget their passwords or encounter the conglomerate's bugs?
  - meindnoch 2y ago
    IMEI blacklisting is not worldwide. The phone can still be used in other countries. Also, rogue carrier employees are selling IMEI blacklist removal as a side gig on the black market.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      Isn't this the same problem either way? The enterprising criminal can take a low level job at Apple rather than a low level job at a carrier, which is presumably one of the reasons it hasn't actually worked. And if the problem is that each country is using a different IMEI blacklist then that seems like an obvious thing to fix. There are already treaties and agreements which is how the global phone network operates to begin with, or you could have US law enforcement set up a system to submit the IMEI to each of the individual blacklists.
      - elzbardico 2y ago
        I trust apple to have more intelligent audit controls on their employees than the average carrier. And the calculation for the carrier is different. There's a inherent incentive on unblocking a phone for the carrier, as this means a billable contract. For Apple there's a inherent incentive in being known as having devices hard to unblock and thus, presumably less attractive for thieves.
      - kube-system 2y ago
        > The enterprising criminal can take a low level job at Apple rather than a low level job at a carrier To my knowledge, Apple has not had any insider compromise of activation lock. This is why criminals try to phish the credentials from the victim instead.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  Yes, here in Barcelona which is pretty much pickpocket central, it's always funny to see the tourists going around with their big iPhone XL sticking way out of their back pocket. At first I used to tell them (the way you would when someone goes around with their backpack wide open) but people were usually like 'mind your own business' so yeah. Better to let them find out the hard way then.
nottorp 2y ago
> thieves manage to get around it somehow There are vulnerabilities. Some years ago when this was a new feature I got an android phone to use for development for someone. I just generated a new google account on it and promptly forgot the new email and pass. Time to return it: surprise, it wanted the previous account to log in after a factory reset. I ended up keeping it and paying for it. A few months later, after a weekend of googling, I found instructions on how to bypass it by using some vulnerability in the browser invoked in the initial set up, got to a browser window with an address bar, used it to download and install some apk with an older version of some system service, and used that to bypass the lockdown. Of course, it's probably much harder than that now. But it's doable.
hansvm 2y ago
I get why the feature exists, but it's my humble opinion that a "brick your device" button shouldn't exist. Repeating myself, some alternatives with similar levels of antitheft whil being much more pleasant for the user: - Don't enable that kind of reset functionality if that kind of antitheft is enabled - Warn the user about the potential bricked device, and require an additional confirmation - Don't require a ping to Google servers when you can verify account ownership just via a matched password hash Antitheft is fine and dandy, but the implementation is bad.

kube-system 2y ago

That's Factory Reset Protection. You can turn it off in settings, if you don't want that security feature. But yes, factory reset on Android phones only wipes the user data partition. Your phone has other things that don't necessarily get reset under a factory reset too, for instance: eSIMs (which is useful that it doesn't, in my experience)

userbinator 2y ago

"Factory reset" is a misnomer, a true factory reset would completely erase the internal storage and replace it with a clean copy of the OS. If that phone is based on a Mediatek SoC, I believe a true reset is possible - look up SPFlashTool and read about this useful exploit: https://tinyhack.com/2021/01/31/dissecting-a-mediatek-bootrom-exploit/ https://tinyhack.com/2021/01/31/dissecting-a-mediatek-bootro...

gblargg 2y ago

Wow, I didn't know Android phones were susceptible to this. Apple did this to a phone I had but I assumed Google couldn't since there are so many manufacturers with varying setups.

alpaca128 2y ago

Sounds like "Find My" on iPhones which is apparently meant as theft protection: as long as it's enabled the device will not accept activation with any other account even after a factory reset as long as the owner doesn't input their password and disable the feature. A lot of buyers of used iPhones and Macbooks find that out the hard way, often because the owners don't even know about that. And actual thieves don't need to care about it as long as they find a buyer who doesn't know about it either.