I have a OnePlus 3 and I was thinking of encrypting it for additional security & privacy reasons. But since I flash various ROM level mods / use xposed modules on my phone, I was wondering about the negative consequences I have to face after encrypting an android phone.
I have a few doubts which need to be cleared.
1) Since my android phone would be encrypted, would I absolutely not be able to flash any new files/make nandroid backup from the recovery?
2) If 1) is true, which means, let's say I install an xposed module which causes a bootloop. Now I would have no way to disable all the active xposed modules from recovery since the files are encrypted, which means I would have to restore everything from scratch?
3) Is there absolutely no known way of decrypting android/access files unencrypted from recovery if we know the master PIN/password?
Can somebody who has dealt/dealing with an encrypted android phone please answer these questions? Thanks.
Deleted
Hi, thanks for your reply.
Just Passing By said:
1. When you access recovery on an encrypted phone, you have to decrypt your phone. After that, your recovery can do anything it normally could do. This would of course include flashing ROMs, zip files, and making nandroid backups.
.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
2 things to say about that.
1)Decrypting just to flash files is a huge problem. TWRP/CWM should have a feature when it asks for the master PIN/password on the recovery, then after I enter it, it should decrypt the data on the fly and then mount the system and data partitions unencrypted so that I can flash files without going though all the decryption process.
2)Correct me if I'm wrong, but all android decryption processes I read online require wiping all data/doing a factory reset. That's again a huge problem. Why? In case I flash a mod/install a xposed module which causes a bootloop, I would have no way to decrypt my data, even if I have my master password. Which would mean I would lose all my files which I haven't backed up.
Problems like these could be avoided if TWRP provided permanent decryption/on the fly decryption using the master PIN. Comparing this with veracrypt on windows for e.g. , let's say my windows is encrypted with veracrypt and a hardware failure occurs at some point in the future & windows refuses to boot, but I'm able to load a live ISO. In this case, veracrypt offers a rescue ISO which I could use to decrypt the data without losing all my files after I enter the master PIN. So in this case, I can have security of encryption & also the convenience of decrypting it without losing all my files with the master password in case my main OS refuses to boot.
If I can't decrypt android from the recovery using the master PIN, that would mean in any case my android refuses to boot, I have lost all my files.
3. I'm assume you meant to say "... If we don't know the master PIN/Password?" And the answer to that is yes. If you can't decrypt your phone, you'll lose everything in it, so making periodic backups is a must. Otherwise, there'd be no point if you could just decrypt things right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, I did not say that wrong, sorry if I wasn't clear enough on my first post. I just wanted to know if there was a way to permanently decrypt android from recovery using the master PIN so that i would be able to recover my files to a USB in case my android refuses to boot.
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Related
How am I able to properly upgrade a ROM if the phone is encrypted? Or would I always have to save all data to an external drive, reformat my SD-Card and do a completely fresh install? Recommended HowTo's?
If people with encrypted phones read this, I'd like to know about your experiences: Do you feel safer with an encrypted phone? Ever lost one or had difficulties with the encryption preventing getting back into your phone?
SecUpwN said:
How am I able to properly upgrade a ROM if the phone is encrypted? Or would I always have to save all data to an external drive, reformat my SD-Card and do a completely fresh install? Recommended HowTo's?
If people with encrypted phones read this, I'd like to know about your experiences: Do you feel safer with an encrypted phone? Ever lost one or had difficulties with the encryption preventing getting back into your phone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, so got the phone to start encrypting itself... it's still not done after 10 hours (leads me to believe that it's broken in DT 0.2.0). As best as I could find the phone only encrypts the data partition, which pretty much means that you should be able to update the rom with no probs (just updating the same rom should work fine with the same data; and changing roms requires a datawipe anyway) or at least that's how i understand it.
as far as security goes the only means (that i know of and have tried) past a standard lockscreen is through adb (or the "i forgot my password" method which requires you to log into your google account) so in this respect encryption would be an improvement.
as far as getting into the phone goes, a factory wipe should eliminate that problem (along with your data )
dessolator666 said:
As best as I could find the phone only encrypts the data partition, which pretty much means that you should be able to update the rom with no probs (just updating the same rom should work fine with the same data; and changing roms requires a datawipe anyway) or at least that's how i understand it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for testing. If the phone is fully encrypted and the SD-Card is taken out, is it still encrypted? I've read of a case where thieves tried to get into the phone and they couldn't because it was fully encrypted - can someone confirm or deny this information, please?
I've recently been getting into more security cautious habits with encryption and what not, due to this whole NSA/Big-brother is watching business... But I have a question (more may pop up as this discussion goes on). Sorry if I seem noob-y, I am still getting a hang of all this encryption business. But here's my first round (regarding just the files being backed up):
If I go ahead and do a full phone encryption with my GN2 where will I stand as far as backups to Dropbox/Copy/Google Drive/etc.?
I currently have photos and such backing up to copy, and I often move backups made through recovery to Dropbox and such. If I were to have photos automatically sync to copy or move system backups to dropbox wouldn't that render them basically useless as I am assuming they move out of the phone encrypted (not being decrypted as they exit).
The photos would be unusable anywhere besides my phone right? So moving them off my phone to share vacation photos for instance would be impossible, and if my phone were to crash they'd be irretrievable? Making the backup process pointless.
Wouldn't the back up be rendered useless as well, exactly when I might need said backup? If my phone were to ever crash or die for some reason, I would lose the encryption key, would even be able to do a full system restore through the recovery? It would seem that the encryption key wouldn't be kept with those back up files, so while it might place everything back in its correct place, it would still be unreadable. Or does it maybe keep the key in system files somewhere so that a full backup would restore the key as well?
And my second round of questions (regarding recoveries and what not):
I am also under the impression that I would not be able to flash through custom recovery either as the internal SD would be inaccessible from the recovery being it doesn't have the encryption key. I am currently running OmniROM and it is in a nightly stage still for my phone. I wouldn't be able to update nightly would I? I am assuming since it basically flashes/overwrites system each time, that I would be losing my encryption key and making everything besides system unusable then right?
And what about downloading ROMs to flash/update directly to my phone? As I download them from in browser or another app and they go to the default /downloads folder they would be encrypted. They wouldn't be accessible from there in recovery, but if I were to try and move them out of internal SD to the external SD they would retain encryption and still be inaccessible? So the only way to download ROMs and updates would be from PC and only move them to the external SD?
Overall, this seems to be crippling a lot of the way I use my phone...
Bump?
Sorry, this is already getting buried and I kinda want to know what's going on before I go ahead and do this...
Zombtastic said:
I've recently been getting into more security cautious habits with encryption and what not, due to this whole NSA/Big-brother is watching business... But I have a question (more may pop up as this discussion goes on). Sorry if I seem noob-y, I am still getting a hang of all this encryption business. But here's my first round (regarding just the files being backed up):
If I go ahead and do a full phone encryption with my GN2 where will I stand as far as backups to Dropbox/Copy/Google Drive/etc.?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not (yet) an expert on this, but when you've encrypted your device, it encrypts the file system on your internal memory and SD card. You have to enter a PIN/password when you turn on your device (and when it times out) to gain access. When the correct PIN is entered at boot time, the file system is available as normal - the underlying data is still encrypted, but the file system can unencrypt it in "real time" for use by apps and the system.
So that means that Dropbox et al all see your files as normal, and any copying you do from your device to something on the net (Drive, Dropbox, a server, etc.) works as normal - the data appears normal to the apps and is copied as normal. So photos would copy across as photos, music as music, etc.
Think of it like this: You can't speak Urdu, only English. There is a book you own that is written in Urdu that you want to tell someone about. You find a translator to read the book and tell you what it says. He reads the first page in Urdu, translates it in his head to English, and tells you what it says. You then tell your friend what it says (in English, of course). Your friend writes down what you told him, in English, then tells you something in reply. You tell your Urdu translator what your friend said (again, in English). Your Urdu translator then translates (in his head) what you said from English to Urdu, and writes it down in the book in Urdu.
At no time do you understand Urdu, nor does your friend. Your friend doesn't even know the book is written in Urdu and doesn't care. He never sees it or accesses it directly. If anyone ever steals your book, they can't read it unless they can read Urdu. The book is only useful to you and your friends if you have an Urdu translator sitting there in the loop. (the analogy is imperfect and incomplete but you get the idea).
So, getting back to your phone, if you have it encrypted, the underlying file system deals with translating things on the fly if you've given it the correct password at boot and login time. No apps ever know about the encryption - they just see data as normal (unencrypted). So any app that wants to copy a photo to Dropbox just sees a normal photo - it never sees the underlying encrypted data. But if you don't enter the correct password at boot time, the phone can't boot, and anyone trying to access the data on the phone won't be able to read it unless they know the password.
Does that help or confuse?
Zombtastic said:
I currently have photos and such backing up to copy, and I often move backups made through recovery to Dropbox and such. If I were to have photos automatically sync to copy or move system backups to Dropbox wouldn't that render them basically useless as I am assuming they move out of the phone encrypted (not being decrypted as they exit).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm, this does my head in a bit but lets untangle it:
- you boot into Recovery. The Recovery you're using (obviously) understands encrypted file systems (some versions of CWM do, some versions of TWRM don't for instance - see near the end of this post for a bit more on this). So when you boot into Recovery and enter your PIN/password, it can then read your file system. You can then do a Recovery-based backup of your file system (or individual files, though I'm not aware that you can do this). The backup it creates is written to the encrypted file system and thus encrypted with the same encryption keys used for everything else.
- You boot the phone back up as normal and enter your PIN/password, and start up Android. You then use Dropbox to copy the Recovery backup files to the cloud. So the question is, "Are these files encrypted?" and I think the answer is, "No". Why? Read the rest of this post and hopefully you'll work out the same conclusion. But I'm pretty sure that the data that ends up on the Cloud is not encrypted.
One general comment worth pointing out as an aside (sorry, this paragraph isn't really related to the above but I wanted to point this out somewhere and its still useful) is that each time you encrypt your phone, it creates a unique encryption key - even if you give it the same PIN/password to use. So if you're forced to rebuild/reflash/wipe your phone in the future, it won't be able to access any data that is still on there (in internal or SD memory) since it won't know the previous encryption key. So you'll have to wipe all data and start again. And at that point, if you choose to encrypt your fresh, newly initialized phone, it will have a new, unique encryption key that won't work on any encrypted data from previous. So if for instance, you plug in an SD card that was encrypted on your phone in an earlier ROM, it won't be readable even if you know the correct PIN/password, since your phone will be using a different underlying unique key.
Zombtastic said:
The photos would be unusable anywhere besides my phone right? So moving them off my phone to share vacation photos for instance would be impossible, and if my phone were to crash they'd be irretrievable? Making the backup process pointless.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, if you're following this, you'll now understand that moving your photos off your phone could be done two ways:
- while you're using the phone as normal (ie. you've booted it, entered your PIN/password, and copying your photos to Dropbox via an app while you're logged on. If you do it this way, you're simply copying photos as normal that can be viewed as normal in Dropbox.
- by copying backups generated while in Recovery. But Recovery will be firstly mounting the encrypted file system successfully (if you gave it the right PIN/password and your version of Recovery supports encryption), which means it can read your photos as normal files, then backs them up into its own normal Recovery file/folder structure and writes them to your encrypted file system, so the underlying data is encrypted unbeknownst to Recovery. Then when you boot up your phone and log in successfully to Android, you can access that data as normal (and unencrypted). So when you then copy it to Dropbox, all you're copying is normal Recovery-created backup files. The copied data won't be encrypted (unless Recovery encrypts them itself, independently, which I don't think it does). So you could copy this data to anybody's phone, so long as they were using a compatible Recovery version and probably compatible ROM.
Zombtastic said:
Wouldn't the back up be rendered useless as well, exactly when I might need said backup? If my phone were to ever crash or die for some reason, I would lose the encryption key, would even be able to do a full system restore through the recovery? It would seem that the encryption key wouldn't be kept with those back up files, so while it might place everything back in its correct place, it would still be unreadable. Or does it maybe keep the key in system files somewhere so that a full backup would restore the key as well?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think your logic is correct. The backup would be useless if the phone loses the encryption key, which it would do if you re-initialized your phone and/or did a new encryption. So you can only recover your backed up data if you haven't done either of those things. A solution to this is to use backup software that runs on your phone (Titanium Backup) that gives you the option to encrypt your data. Some caveats to this approach should be obvious:
- you firstly need to decide if you trust your backup software's encryption
- you need to use a strong password and be able to recall it months/years from now when you go to restore your data
- you need to copy your backups off your phone (such as onto your SD card, cloud, dropbox, etc.) in case you lose your phone.
Zombtastic said:
And my second round of questions (regarding recoveries and what not):
I am also under the impression that I would not be able to flash through custom recovery either as the internal SD would be inaccessible from the recovery being it doesn't have the encryption key. I am currently running OmniROM and it is in a nightly stage still for my phone. I wouldn't be able to update nightly would I? I am assuming since it basically flashes/overwrites system each time, that I would be losing my encryption key and making everything besides system unusable then right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tricky - if you flash/update your phone with a new ROM, you will probably be OK so long as you haven't wiped the part of your phone's storage that holds the encryption information. I don't know where this is. But the nightly updates I do to my phone don't normally touch my data - all my apps are still there and it boots identically to the way it did before I updated it. HOWEVER, its possible that an update may force me to wipe my phone for some reason - the update may fail, it may contain significant changes, or I might screw something up. I probably end up completely wiping my phone at least once every 2 months just because I like to play with the latest and greatest ROMs, or I screw something up. So if that happens, I'm going to lose the encryption information and thus would lose everything on the phone.
Of course, I can always restore my apps and data via Titanium Backup, since I back up my stuff quite often and then copy it to Dropbox.
Zombtastic said:
And what about downloading ROMs to flash/update directly to my phone? As I download them from in browser or another app and they go to the default /downloads folder they would be encrypted. They wouldn't be accessible from there in recovery, but if I were to try and move them out of internal SD to the external SD they would retain encryption and still be inaccessible? So the only way to download ROMs and updates would be from PC and only move them to the external SD?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmmm - good question. A simpler question is, "Is my encrypted file system accessible while in Recovery?" I believe the answer is, "Yes, if you use CWM, No if you use TWRM". But I say that because from what I've been reading, some versions of CWM/TWRM can/can't handle encrypted devices. But you'll already have sorted this out at the time you're trying to encrypt your device anyway since the encryption process involves rebooting your phone into recovery I believe - and if you're not using the correct supported Recovery, this step will fail. But if you are using a supported recovery, this step will work, and therefore logically I'd assume that you can access your encrypted file system while in Recovery in the future. I'd imagine Recovery would prompt you for your PIN/password in order to mount the encrypted file system.
So assuming the above is correct, you would be able to access the newly-downloaded ROMs while in Recovery and thus can flash them. But of course, Caveat Emptor with flashing the new ROM - if it forces you to wipe anything, you may end up unable to access any of the data.
Zombtastic said:
Overall, this seems to be crippling a lot of the way I use my phone...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From what I've been researching, you won't have a problem anyway, because I haven't come across anyone that has successfully encrypted their phone using a custom ROM. Strangely, this ability seems to be unwanted by XDA people. My tinfoil hat tells me that there are people ensuring that this ability continues to not work on custom ROMs until/unless a backdoor capability is found. Hopefully I'm wrong on many counts.
douginoz said:
From what I've been researching, you won't have a problem anyway, because I haven't come across anyone that has successfully encrypted their phone using a custom ROM. Strangely, this ability seems to be unwanted by XDA people. My tinfoil hat tells me that there are people ensuring that this ability continues to not work on custom ROMs until/unless a backdoor capability is found. Hopefully I'm wrong on many counts.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Amazing post by the way! It does seem very helpful.
BUT it's very funny you mention it not working. Because that's exactly what happened. After not getting a response here or in the ROM's forum for a few days, I decided to just take the plunge and do it. I was just planning on testing everything out my self and figuring it out as I went. The first time it seemed fine, the encryption went through it seemed.
Being as I didn't know any of the info you just enlightened me with, I did fear that nothing was truly encrypted though. Everything was transferring to my computer with a drag and drop and working fine, so I was afraid (without evidence) that nothing was truly encrypted. I asked on the ROM's forum again (still waiting for an answer).
That night, my phone was left plugged in charging, yet some how had turned off in the night. I awake to my phone asking for an encryption key. I enter my key in to no avail. Nothing works and my phone is left unable to boot. It was utterly denying my password. I had to reflash. I asked about that in the forums as well, whether that was normal or if encryption was maybe not implemented yet, etc. The dev running the nightlies for my device has responded to the forum multiple times but not to me. Another user mentioned it might be that it is now merged together as a Galaxy Note 2 ROM and not specifically a T-mobile Galaxy Note 2 ROM (might be possible. Idk.).
Now, I have tried to re-encrypt. Multiple times. But I cannot for the life of me get it to even start now. Every time I go to start the encryption process it shows me the fullscreen image of the android unzipped horizontally (at which point it is supposed to reboot and start encrypting) and it hangs/sits there forever. Not rebooting, not anything. If I hit the back button, the image disappears and it goes back to my phone. Working perfectly fine, like it never even started doing anything. I am not doing anything differently. I don't know what could be happening to stop it from even getting as far as it did last time. Unless the devs maybe started working on it and have disabled it for the time being/screwed it up worse, I dunno.
Not you got me crafting a tin-foil hat...
I have a LG G5 H850, with 6.0.1 and stock V10c-EUR-xx.
I disabled disk encryption using the no-verity-opt-encrypt.zip utility by jcadduono.
Now I wiped again using TWRP, but encryption is still disabled as the boot.img/partition still has his modifications to the fstab files (where he does
the change s/\bforceencrypt=/encryptable=/g etc.)
How to I set that back to as it was?
I got into this sitation as I kept finding TWRP could not access the partition - asked for password and there was none.
I do want to use encryption but in my first hour of setting up the phone I had a problem where when I booted into TWRP it would ask for a password and it was not "default_password", and I had not set anything and never used lock screen/pin etc. I tried setting a lock screen/boot screen password - the phone worked but TWRP could not access the filesystem. I tried the cryptfs application and still TWRP was not able to decrypt/access the partition.
Then I tried a terminal with vdc cryptfs changepw command and that just locked me out of the phone completely, as the new or old boot password would not work.
So I went for the no-verity-opt-encrypt.zip solution - but I dont want an unencrypted phone either. Now I want to try encryption and TWRP again - this time setting a pin at the first setup screen opportunity to see if that gets set as the password that TWRP could use. However I can't remove the disable encryption patch!
Ideally I am trying to get to a setup where:
encryption is enabled
I want to be able to boot TWRP and access the encrypted filesystem and install more zip files such as xposed/supersu updates etc anytime in the future.
I dont want to use the "no-verity-opt-encrypt.zip" patch.
I do not want TWRP to be locked out from modifying the encrypted system partition.
Additionally, I havbe not been able to install xposed using TWRP and the zip file (http://dl-xda.xposed.info/framework/sdk23/arm64/xposed-v86-sdk23-arm64.zip) .
In TWRP it installs, I dont see any errors, but on boot up I have no xposed icon. I have been able to install it by downloading the apk and installing as an untrusted source, not sure if there is something wrong in having to do it this way?
Thanks.
current TWRP build for G5 doesn't support encryption
you can use encryption but in TWRP you won't be able to access some partitions (if I remember right is data partition but I might be wrong here)
in order to do so, you need to restore base firmware with LGUP that will turn encryption back on
Thanks. I got it working by flashing just the boot using LG-H85010C-Flashable.Boot.zip
tomb007 said:
Thanks. I got it working by flashing just the boot using LG-H85010C-Flashable.Boot.zip
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
may i ask how did you root it after that? because everytime i try to rooted while encrypted,i flash the zip in twrp (with no errors) but system still has no root! the only way i could root was to format /data in twrp, hence have a decrypted phone!
I am looking for the same thing as you are : encrypted phone with twrp and root access.
I rooted using TWRP adding supersu at the time of installing the OS before the OS encrypts the partition. Once the partition is encrypted TWRP can no longer access it, and I can no longer install supersu or anything else.
I may have installed root before encrypting, then reflashed the boot partition so that encryption is re-enabled, then ran twrp to reapply supersu - which would fail to put files on the encrypted partition - but this is fine as they were already there, and let the twrsp supersu installation modify the boot partition.
The result is an encrypted phone with root and TWRP. However, TWRP can not access the encrypted partition so I don't think I can update supersu using TWRP, and I dont think I can patch the OS easily without wiping the encrypted data and reinstalling everything due to this. As I am not sure if updating the OS works without wiping data, I have yet to try that.
you shouldnt have to mess with data at all to use supersu while encrypted.
my g5 is encrypted and always has been (besides in various testing) and there's never been an issue of flashing supersu.
though there may be some issues if trying to restore encryption and flashing supersu in the same reboot cycle.
and yes, data partition in twrp cant be accessed in twrp if encrypted.. but you can just push a file to the /tmp directory while in twrp and then flash anything... or enable adb sideload and flash something that way... or use an external sd card and put the file on there. the only thing you really miss out of if using twrp while encrypted is being able to manipulate the data partition... it does not stop you from flashing files or running scripts that modify /system or other partitions (besides /data).
supersu uses the unencrypted /cache/ partition to work in when you flash it while encrypted so an encrypted /data partition should not be relevant.
Hi folks.
I've just acquired a Xiaomi Redmi Note 3, and I have officially unlocked the bootloader, and installed Redwolf Recovery, Magisk, and the Pixel Experience Oreo ROM, and the phone was working for a few days without issues.
Today however, whenever I boot into my phone, force close errors pop up at three errors per second, and when I try to perform a factory reset and reinstall a ROM, the current, yet corrupt installation remains, and I cannot get rid of it.
Is there any way to solve this issue, as this is the first time I have experienced this?
Thanks.
aha360 said:
Today however, whenever I boot into my phone, force close errors pop up at three errors per second, and when I try to perform a factory reset and reinstall a ROM, the current, yet corrupt installation remains, and I cannot get rid of it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, you need to do advanced wipe in recovery and wipe /system, /data, /cache, /dalvik, /ART before installing a new ROM.
Should your preferred ROM still produce this issue, please try for a quick test https://download.lineageos.org/kenzo
You don't need Magisk to root LOS.
:good:
k23m said:
Hi, you need to do advanced wipe in recovery and wipe /system, /data, /cache, /dalvik, /ART before installing a new ROM.
Should your preferred ROM still produce this issue, please try for a quick test https://download.lineageos.org/kenzo
You don't need Magisk to root LOS.
:good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you very much for that. I actually did that before you suggested this to me, and I'm back up and running now.
However, one thing I have learned is that you shouldn't add any files to internal storage AFTER doing a full, destructive wipe and AFTER installing anything from there, as those files will disappear while the storage gets occupied in the process, so I ended up having to repeat the process, but with the required files ON THE microSD CARD.
Another thing I have learned from this is to not install a custom ROM on encrypted storage and double-check the encryption status BEFORE flashing a ROM as I now know that some stock ROMs automatically encrypt the /data/ and /data/media/ partitions, which is a huge pain in the backside.
Lesson of the day: even if you think you're familiar with custom ROMs and installing them, there are times whereby you'll end up hitting brick wall dilemmas like this one.
aha360 said:
Thank you very much for that. I actually did that before you suggested this to me, and I'm back up and running now.
However, one thing I have learned is that you shouldn't add any files to internal storage AFTER doing a full, destructive wipe and AFTER installing anything from there, as those files will disappear while the storage gets occupied in the process, so I ended up having to repeat the process, but with the required files ON THE microSD CARD.
Another thing I have learned from this is to not install a custom ROM on encrypted storage and double-check the encryption status BEFORE flashing a ROM as I now know that some stock ROMs automatically encrypt the /data/ and /data/media/ partitions, which is a huge pain in the backside.
Lesson of the day: even if you think you're familiar with custom ROMs and installing them, there are times whereby you'll end up hitting brick wall dilemmas like this one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
U only need to do format data option if u come from miui rom. Coz miui encrypts the data and internal sd. So format data option is must.
Moving from one custom rom to another u dont need format data. Only wipe data reset is enough.
If u have any important document . keep it in external sd. If something goes wrong or custom rom cant boot then we use format data option which erases ur internal sd too.
No need to encrypt the device. Just install the rom which comes with selinux enforcing which is enough to protect ur userspace.
naik2902 said:
U only need to do format data option if u come from miui rom. Coz miui encrypts the data and internal sd. So format data option is must.
Moving from one custom rom to another u dont need format data. Only wipe data reset is enough.
If u have any important document . keep it in external sd. If something goes wrong or custom rom cant boot then we use format data option which erases ur internal sd too.
No need to encrypt the device. Just install the rom which comes with selinux enforcing which is enough to protect ur userspace.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Muchos gracias.
Also, I have a microSD card for that very reason, which is to keep all my files that I want to keep separate and safe from destructive deletion, and I have now learned that stock ROMs like the MIUI ROM encrypt the data and internal shared storage partitions, and that I have to do a full, destructive, internal storage wipe whenever I migrate to a custom ROM FROM a stock ROM.
Also, I frankly don't give a two sh!ts about storage encryption and SElinux policies as they're far too inconvenient for the trade-off in terms of technological security versus technological freedom, so I installed The SELinux Switch app from here, and I intend to leave the device decrypted for the aforementioned reasons.
aha360 said:
Also, I frankly don't give a two sh!ts about storage encryption and SElinux policies as they're far too inconvenient for the trade-off in terms of technological security versus technological freedom, so I installed The SELinux Switch app from here, and I intend to leave the device decrypted for the aforementioned reasons.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly. When we unlock bootloaders and root our devices we choose freedom and the remaining constrictions like SElinux and encryption are, in this context, completely useless shackles. Furthermore, encryption contributes to NAND flash wear and premature device failure.
:highfive:
k23m said:
Exactly. When we unlock bootloaders and root our devices we choose freedom and the remaining constrictions like SElinux and encryption are, in this context, completely useless shackles. Furthermore, encryption contributes to NAND flash wear and premature device failure.
:highfive:
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Not only that - SELinux, when set to Enforcing, restricts certain simple commands and shoves them unnecessarily behind root privileges, like "reboot bootloader", or "reboot -p", or "reboot fastboot", or "reboot recovery", or "reboot". I'm not going to wait 60 seconds for a device to reboot into recovery - screw that.
Hell, even having SELinux set to Enforcing can interfere with or block infrared beam access. Stupid crap I tell ya.
Is there anything way that i can disable data encryption? Both TWRP and orange fox not allow me to install anything and asking for password, i tried both lock password and mi password but nothing. I am trying to root my phone, i also tried to make a patched boot image with magisk manager but not install button was showing up.Any solution?
Stock rom with miui global 10.3.1.0 version
tzagaritos said:
Is there anything way that i can disable data encryption? Both TWRP and orange fox not allow me to install anything and asking for password, i tried both lock password and mi password but nothing. I am trying to root my phone, i also tried to make a patched boot image with magisk manager but not install button was showing up.Any solution?
Stock rom with miui global 10.3.1.0 version
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Don´t waste your time trying to decipher the password, they´re advanced algorithms that Android uses to make the Encryption-By-Default to protect data user not a personal password that can be easily decoded.
You can flash any zip using adb sideload through Advanced options in recovery, the problem would be trying to boot up due to AVB implementation, I never cared about format data when is needed so my important files I ever have on my external SDCard.
Some members refer that such recovery can decrypt data or not, this is not a problem by its own but the ability to boot. The simple way to decrypt data is formatting it.
As a side note decrypt data will be required just in some cases like when you unlocked for first time, when you are coming back to a Miui upgraded rom then to an AOSP one but most of custom roms based on Miui don´t have encryption like ROS, Xiaomi.eu or Mi-Globe.
SubwayChamp said:
Don´t waste your time trying to decipher the password, they´re advanced algorithms that Android uses to make the Encryption-By-Default to protect data user not a personal password that can be easily decoded.
You can flash any zip using adb sideload through Advanced options in recovery, the problem would be trying to boot up due to AVB implementation, I never cared about format data when is needed so my important files I ever have on my external SDCard.
Some members refer that such recovery can decrypt data or not, this is not a problem by its own but the ability to boot. The simple way to decrypt data is formatting it.
As a side note decrypt data will be required just in some cases like when you unlocked for first time, when you are coming back to a Miui upgraded rom then to an AOSP one but most of custom roms based on Miui don´t have encryption like ROS, Xiaomi.eu or Mi-Globe.
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thanks a lot , i did not know that i could flash zip files in that way, you saved me thanks again
use the custom TWRP by wzsx150, decryption is working with that one https://forum.xda-developers.com/mi-8-Lite/development/mi-8-lite-twrp-t3850019
borg4571 said:
use the custom TWRP by wzsx150, decryption is working with that one https://forum.xda-developers.com/mi-8-Lite/development/mi-8-lite-twrp-t3850019
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Is possible to send me the img file through Google drive or anything familiar;its a mess trying yo download from the Chinese site
I have Android pie