[HacktionLab] wiping phones data

[m3shrom]

Hi there,

I've managed to to use this tool as suggested below.
https://f-droid.org/packages/us.spotco.extirpater/

It locates in a android 7.0 (Galaxy s6) phone, a primary and secondary 
storage. No SD card is plugged in. Both about 27G

I think this is the difference between internal and external storage.

https://medium.com/@babul.sust.cse/understanding-of-android-storage-system-17b6134f873

external in this case is still on the phone (not SD card), but users 
have access to it via Files. Compared to internal which users can't see 
in files.

If so, this would be a good reason to use this app, rather than just 
relying on overwriting data with files via USB as I have seen suggested 
in other forums

Let me know if this makes sense?

Thanks
Mick

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	Re: [HacktionLab] wiping phones data
Date: 	Thu, 23 Nov 2023 18:55:31 +0000
From: 	mat A <mat at de-mystify.co.uk>
To: 	mickfuzz <mickfuzz23 at gmail.com>, hacktionlab at lists.aktivix.org



this tool writes zero's or randomness to free space on internal and 
external sd drives:

https://f-droid.org/packages/us.spotco.extirpater/

Works on android 4 and up so should be adequate for the use case and 
avoiding re install,

Mat


November 22, 2023 6:11 PM, "mickfuzz" <mickfuzz23 at gmail.com 
<mailto:mickfuzz23 at gmail.com?to=%22mickfuzz%22%20<mickfuzz23 at gmail.com>>> 
wrote:

    On 21/11/2023 22:00, sb wrote:
>     Hi all,
>
>     Long time lurker here, hi. The question is how deep do you want to go?

    Not too deep if I'm honest. The main thing is this. I would like to
    be able to say to people that donate their phones for reuse
    something like.

    "We wipe the user data from the phone in a way which makes it
    impractical for the next user to read it."

    So not impossible / military grade no fragments etc. But in
    practical terms it's not going to happen with any off the shelf tools.

    In all likelihood a factory reset would be adequate, but I would
    like to go further and prevent people from using a tool like dd
    rescue (gui) to recover files for phones before they were encrypted
    by default.

    So some kind of tool to write zeros, overwrite old data seems like a
    good idea. Any suggestions welcome for android pre-10

    So I do want to avoid having to install a new OS as that'll probably
    be overkill for this project I would hope.

    Thanks everyone for their help so far.

    On 22/11/2023 14:09, Michael Rogers wrote:
>     On 21/11/2023 22:00, sb wrote:
>>     When doing a factory reset, there is actually a duplicate hidden
>>     partition of the main one, that just gets reloaded onto the main
>>     one if it goes down. When you flash the bootloader with another
>>     manager, that's how you get access. Hope that makes sense. I have
>>     no idea about iPhone s.
>
>     I think this is only the system partition though, not the user
>     partition where all your personal data's stored. A factory reset
>     should wipe the user partition but not either of the system
>     partitions.

    That was the impression that I got too. This would be good to
    confirm one way or other.

    nice one
    Mick





On 23/11/2023 18:55, mat A wrote:
>
> this tool writes zero's or randomness to free space on internal and 
> external sd drives:
>
> https://f-droid.org/packages/us.spotco.extirpater/
>
> Works on android 4 and up so should be adequate for the use case and 
> avoiding re install,
>
> Mat
>
>
> November 22, 2023 6:11 PM, "mickfuzz" <mickfuzz23 at gmail.com 
> <mailto:mickfuzz23 at gmail.com?to=%22mickfuzz%22%20<mickfuzz23 at gmail.com>>> 
> wrote:
>
>     On 21/11/2023 22:00, sb wrote:
>>     Hi all,
>>
>>     Long time lurker here, hi. The question is how deep do you want
>>     to go?
>
>     Not too deep if I'm honest. The main thing is this. I would like
>     to be able to say to people that donate their phones for reuse
>     something like.
>
>     "We wipe the user data from the phone in a way which makes it
>     impractical for the next user to read it."
>
>     So not impossible / military grade no fragments etc. But in
>     practical terms it's not going to happen with any off the shelf tools.
>
>     In all likelihood a factory reset would be adequate, but I would
>     like to go further and prevent people from using a tool like dd
>     rescue (gui) to recover files for phones before they were
>     encrypted by default.
>
>     So some kind of tool to write zeros, overwrite old data seems like
>     a good idea. Any suggestions welcome for android pre-10
>
>     So I do want to avoid having to install a new OS as that'll
>     probably be overkill for this project I would hope.
>
>     Thanks everyone for their help so far.
>
>     On 22/11/2023 14:09, Michael Rogers wrote:
>>     On 21/11/2023 22:00, sb wrote:
>>>     When doing a factory reset, there is actually a duplicate hidden
>>>     partition of the main one, that just gets reloaded onto the main
>>>     one if it goes down. When you flash the bootloader with another
>>>     manager, that's how you get access. Hope that makes sense. I
>>>     have no idea about iPhone s.
>>
>>     I think this is only the system partition though, not the user
>>     partition where all your personal data's stored. A factory reset
>>     should wipe the user partition but not either of the system
>>     partitions.
>
>     That was the impression that I got too. This would be good to
>     confirm one way or other.
>
>     nice one
>     Mick
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> HacktionLab mailing list
> HacktionLab at lists.aktivix.org
> https://lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo/hacktionlab
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.aktivix.org/pipermail/hacktionlab/attachments/20231201/37cc586b/attachment.htm>