Silk Road forums

Discussion => Security => Topic started by: drago73 on August 09, 2013, 04:55 am

Title: CAN I RESET MY PHONE TO FACTORY RESTORE AND BE SAFE FROM LE?
Post by: drago73 on August 09, 2013, 04:55 am
Was just curious. I am moving in a week or so and want to get rid of all traces of SR including forums. I know this has been unwise and stupid, but my cell phone service sucks when i've tried to use tor services on it. I've never bought away from being on Tor, but i will go to the onion.to site to log in with my cellphone just to go to the forums. I repeat, i don't buy or purchase orders except on my home pc, and only with TOR browser. God forbid i ever got busted, i wouldn't want any of the onion.to's logs to be accessible by phone. So would a factory reset on my phone work?
Title: Re: CAN I RESET MY PHONE TO FACTORY RESTORE AND BE SAFE FROM LE?
Post by: cirrus on August 09, 2013, 05:01 am
Wipe it and start from scratch, and NEVER use onion.to for anything.
Title: Re: CAN I RESET MY PHONE TO FACTORY RESTORE AND BE SAFE FROM LE?
Post by: pathenry76 on August 09, 2013, 05:06 am
Why not use orbot?
Title: Re: CAN I RESET MY PHONE TO FACTORY RESTORE AND BE SAFE FROM LE?
Post by: spunjtom on August 09, 2013, 05:28 am
It is very difficult to properly sanitize a phone.  Some are better than others but most are near impossible.  Load-leveling wreaks havoc on this process.
Title: Re: CAN I RESET MY PHONE TO FACTORY RESTORE AND BE SAFE FROM LE?
Post by: Just Chipper on August 09, 2013, 04:23 pm
Wipe it and start from scratch, and NEVER use onion.to for anything.
^^This.

In addition I would change all passwords for SR and SRF immediately. And if possible after factory reset install CyanogenMod patched with OpenPDroid 2.0 to lockdown the phone.
Title: Re: CAN I RESET MY PHONE TO FACTORY RESTORE AND BE SAFE FROM LE?
Post by: pathenry76 on August 11, 2013, 06:22 pm
Wipe it and start from scratch, and NEVER use onion.to for anything.
^^This.

In addition I would change all passwords for SR and SRF immediately. And if possible after factory reset install CyanogenMod patched with OpenPDroid 2.0 to lockdown the phone.

I am considering rooting my phone after factory data reset. Will the OpenPDroid 2.0 provide enough security to safely use SR? Or should I only use the forums via phone?
Title: Re: CAN I RESET MY PHONE TO FACTORY RESTORE AND BE SAFE FROM LE?
Post by: Just Chipper on August 11, 2013, 07:37 pm
I am considering rooting my phone after factory data reset. Will the OpenPDroid 2.0 provide enough security to safely use SR? Or should I only use the forums via phone?

Personally, I don't believe so. You still can't access the GSM stack, SIM Card, or other proprietary systems on the phones. Even with the OS locked down there are still vulnerabilities. I would browse the forums from this setup, but never login anywhere.
Title: Re: CAN I RESET MY PHONE TO FACTORY RESTORE AND BE SAFE FROM LE?
Post by: drago73 on August 14, 2013, 02:45 pm
well fuck me runnin :o so i'm pretty much going to have to trash my phone to be 100% secure. fuuuuuck....
Title: Re: CAN I RESET MY PHONE TO FACTORY RESTORE AND BE SAFE FROM LE?
Post by: sourman on August 14, 2013, 02:54 pm
It depends on how seriously you were involved in whatever you were doing. If you were buying pot and shrooms for personal use, then a factory reset is probably fine. You can even fill the phone memory with random files and then delete them as a form of crude free space wipe. Of course if you can find a free space wipe app for the device, the would be way more effective. lol

If you were doing anything that could potentially jeopardize your freedom in a big way, then smash the phone to dust and forget about it. It's just not worth it man. Hopefully the phone isn't expensive -- if it is, then it's a good lesson on why you should start over with cheap burner phones :)
Title: Re: CAN I RESET MY PHONE TO FACTORY RESTORE AND BE SAFE FROM LE?
Post by: Wadozo on August 14, 2013, 03:03 pm
If you have anything stored on the phone that could be incriminating, linking you to any illegal activities, smash the phone to bits to be on the safe side.  :( Smart phones, USB drives (Pen drives, Flash drives) or any flash media (memory cards, etc) must first be encrypted the moment you get it so it won't need to be erased in the future. The reason behind this is because with any solid state media (SSD,s, USB Flash Drives, Memory Cards, etc), the only way to delete all content stored on a drive is to bypass the FTL (Flash Translation Layer) and write directly to each bit of memory. However, doing so will effectively destroy the wear leveling done by the drives controller and ensure the media will eventually fail, defeating the purpose of securely wiping it in the first place.  :)
Title: Re: CAN I RESET MY PHONE TO FACTORY RESTORE AND BE SAFE FROM LE?
Post by: Just Chipper on August 14, 2013, 04:21 pm
well fuck me runnin :o so i'm pretty much going to have to trash my phone to be 100% secure. fuuuuuck....

Yes. That phone has a number of identifying markers like MAC address, IMEI, SIM Card, etc that are tied directly to you. This is why you never use the phone for anything sensitive it has far too wide a surface area to try and secure.
Title: Re: CAN I RESET MY PHONE TO FACTORY RESTORE AND BE SAFE FROM LE?
Post by: Hitch on August 14, 2013, 04:28 pm

   I don't trust those tor apps. Secret foreign intelligence courts compelling private companies to build back doors in software for monitoring, and threatening them with jail and massive fines if they alert their customer base... Not worth the risk.