My GrapheneOS was cracked by Belgian police

Maketrades

I smell bs here even do I have a flu ATM

starglider

SkynetPrime Also, and I'm not sure about other countries, but in the US, investigators can and do lie. An investigator could absolutely say "we cracked your phone and know what you did; cooperate now and plea out" even if the phone is sitting in an evidence locker happily fortified in BFU. They don't have to share their actual evidence until the criminal trial begins (again, at least in the US).

starglider

omg this guy's Twitter thread is insane. "The only evidence against me was inside the phone that was supposed to be safe." <-- admitting that there was evidence.

"My lawyer literally told me that I would be let off if the phone was what it promised to be." <-- probably not what an actual lawyer would say, but innocent people typically don't use the term "let off."

If this is real (which, honestly, probably not), this guy is basically live-tweeting his guilty plea on Twitter.

SkynetPrime

starglider

starglider If this is real (which, honestly, probably not), this guy is basically live-tweeting his guilty plea on Twitter.

Yep..This is exactly what I'm trying to say.

SkynetPrime So here's the thing.. If, and a big if that 0.00000001% your statement here and on x is true, and your saying..

b8r2 My OS was seized, i had all security features enabled. Now i got a call from my lawyer saying i have a warrant for my arrest for a Murder that was planned, the warrant was sent out by the INTEL department of the federal police.

Then your admitting that you must be guilty.

Let me explain.. Only you know what's on your phone, so if your claiming that "a warrant for my arrest for a Murder that was planned" and claiming they have cracked your phone, you must be guilty or you wouldn't be making this claim.
Because, if "a warrant for my arrest for a Murder that was planned" wasn't on your phone. You would know that they haven't cracked your phone.. You get me..?

All makes no sense atal.

SkynetPrime

b8r2 = Baiter2 🤷‍♂️😅

r134a

I've did some limited research, and i'm relatively good at profiling, don't ask me why.

This might all be bs, but currently i believe person is of Maghreb descent. Person might be related to one of the 'groups' in Antwerp related to 'forbidden goods'. These groups are interconnected with some groups in the Netherlands, aswell they have some territorial 'wars' going on in Antwerp. Might explain the potentional charges.

Person claims on X he is aware of another example of this happening to somebody else in the Netherlands.

These groups probably use GrapheneOS for the wrong reasons, and thinking using it makes them invisible. Probably very less of a technical understanding and got potentionally caught because of bad opsec, and now blaiming GOS because of that...

I don't have facts to back all of this up, and this is all mainly instinct.

monogram

Totally legit story, we're doomed.

raccoondad

From the twitter of the OP, he claims that he was put in custody after giving the duress pin to the police...AKA destroying evidence.

Idk what you expected to happen, potentially they didn't even find anything but they still suspect you due to that stunt. You did the digital equivalent of smashing the phone on the ground when police asked for it.

monogram

raccoondad From the twitter of the OP, he claims that he was put in custody after giving the duress pin to the police...AKA destroying evidence.

Yeah and he posted a bogus letter with wrong dates - but then he corrected the dates blaming the error on a "Linux kernel GPU bug" - where the Belgium Police or the Homicide Forensics or the Intelligence Department scheduled an appointment with a manslaughter suspect, which is posting everywhere on the Internet his thrilling story, instead of just being handcuffed in custody.

gta3

b8r2 just becuase your lawyer said the device was "cracked" doesn't make it true.

Many people including your lawyer use terminology they don't know the meaning of.

Cracked / hacked / bypassed / decoded all mean diffetent things in diff contexts and also in diff people

Go ask your lawyer what exactly was "cracked"

I don't believe this thread tbh, smells fake__

SouthernPolish99

Not commenting on the validity of this claim or story, but isn't this whole conversation just a bad look for this public forum?
To me, it feels more like a plant leading to the interpretation of "hey guys I did crimes, why didn't my GOS phone protect me like it should?".

GrapheneOS

SouthernPolish99 There's a strong chance it's an attempt at smearing GrapheneOS by portraying it as being used by criminals. However, their overall story and claim of GrapheneOS failing to protect them are so incredibly weak and without basis that it's hard to understand why someone would make this up to attack the project. It's hard to say.

There's no actual indication of the duress PIN not working as they claim. It's likely they configured it a long time ago and forgot it and made a typo twice in a row while setting it which is a common occurrence for regular PINs leading to people needing to wipe their device. Unlike a regular lock PIN/password, you aren't regularly entering it to avoid it being forgotten. That's part of why it's good to write down a duress PIN/password along with that being a useful way to get someone to enter it if they find a paper with "PIN: 123456" in the wallet and/or phone case.

There's no indication of the device being exploited. Their claim is that the device must have been exploited because they believe there's no other incriminating information beyond what's on the phone. The specific information they're referring to are what they said are Threema messages with what they said has 1 minute deletion enabled so the messages would be deleted, but potentially still around not actually wiped either if Threema doesn't attempt to wipe them or it didn't work due to SSD wear levelling, etc. It's very strange to claim GrapheneOS must have been exploited because they think there's no other way incriminating information on them could have been found. The specific statement they made is that a charge of murder was raised to premeditated murder and they believe that was raised due to them getting their incriminating messages. The simplest explanation is that someone who openly posts all this incriminating stuff about themselves didn't have good opsec and left a lot of evidence they don't realize beyond what's on the phone, or left a way to get into the phone such as a reused PIN/password, etc.

starglider

GrapheneOS The simplest explanation is that someone who openly posts all this incriminating stuff about themselves didn't have good opsec

LOL yeah I think that just about nails it.

For anyone who's interested in this sort of thing, I'd highly recommend Dark Wire by Joseph Cox. It tells the story of Anom, a backdoored chat app that the FBI ran for years. The whole thing is very interesting, but the most eye opening part to me involved the personality traits of the more successful criminals. The higher-up guys actually were pretty smart and capable, but to a person they just had no self-control. They'd get pissed and throw a blender out of a window, and get deported before they could execute their plan. They'd be suspicious of Anom but rush ahead anyway because they couldn't wait and take the time to be sure. They'd threaten to kill and kidnap people the way I drink water.

I think maybe the most realistic part of this whole story (which still seems highly questionable) is someone pissed off and angry and yelling on Twitter about software he doesn't understand to no benefit whatsoever except helping the prosecution. The guys in Dark Wire would do the same shit.

Murcielago

GrapheneOS

The specific information they're referring to are what they said are Threema messages with what they said has 1 minute deletion enabled so the messages would be deleted,

Since version 5.5 for Android messages in Threema can be edited retrospectively and deleted for everyone (sender and recipient) within six hours of being sent. But to my knowledge, Threema does not currently offer disappearing messages.

InSettings> Media & Storage> Storage Management there is an option to automatically delete messages. However, this only deletes the messages on your own device (presumably to save storage space) and the shortest interval that can be set is Keep messages for 1 week.

I have no idea of how secure "delete for everyone" and "delete automatically" are implementend and how they hold up against forensic measures.

GrapheneOS

https://x.com/b8r200/status/1997122195777089865

My phone was directly put into a big special bag.

I gave them the duress pin and I assume they used it. As I didn't hear back from them until now

https://x.com/b8r200/status/1997142855710920861

i was sitting over the fed when he entered it, and i gave correct pin

One of many major inconsistencies in the shifting story that's being told.

hemingway

GrapheneOS i was sitting over the fed when he entered it, and i gave correct pin

Wait are you pointing out the duress pin vs. correct pin as an inconsistency? Because that was clearly in response to someone asking them "did you give them the wrong duress pin?"

While all of this does seem more likely to be someone overestimating their opsec skills, too many counterpoints raised by other users in this thread rely on a literal interpretation of words used by a (presumably) non native English speaker's liberal use of the language. But reddit detective level reasoning would not be a good look if coming from an admin.

indigomadelin

Belgian/French psyops aimed at tarnishing GOS' reputation.

indigomadelin

Murcielago Yeah, I noticed that the OP mentioned enabling a 1 minute timeout for automatic message deletion. However, Threema's best option is one week.

https://github.com/threema-ch/threema-android/blob/9bb7408fe35e0729e837eadd0d16f9ff6645d160/app/src/main/res/values/arrays.xml#L95

Maketrades

Guys please are you serious thinking this might be true?? A suspect of a murder won't be invited for a chat at a police station they will be arrested right away its not a neighbouring fight with some screaming!!

r134a

Maketrades According to him he was arrested and held in custody for 7 months, but then was let go because there wasn't enough evidence at that time.

Doesn't mean the investigation stopped, and perhaps now some more potentionally incriminating facts are obtained, hence the interrogation request. This might sound weird in some jurisdinctions, and actually is quite weird, but not in Belgium...

I still believe that person believes himself that what he is saying is true, but not making it true as already explained above.

In my opinin it is too dumb and low effort to be a smearing campaign, it wouldn't make any sense.

Hathaway_Noa

I analyzed his twitter posts and OP posted the following:

"I was not under pressure, and I certainly didn't provide the wrong pin.

The USB duress also failed."

This reveals a lot! Firstly: GrapheneOS doesn't have native USB duress feature! This is exclusively to the app called: "wasted" which indeed is unreliable and tend to not work when not configured good! So this makes me thing the guy in question relied on both Normal and USB duresss trough the wasted app and not through the native Duress feature of GrapheneOS itself.

indigomadelin

Hathaway_Noa or it could be this
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/26200-zerotrace-phone-another-shady-con-operation
Their docs
https://zerotrace.org/kb/emergency-factory-reset/
https://zerotrace.org/kb/features/

Tandara

Hathaway_Noa That's what I noticed too. As soon as I saw it I was like 'this dude clearly doesn't know what he is talking about"

b8r2

Hathaway_Noa The daita pin & password on the phone for it to activate and format itself but the functionality didnt work as intended wich resulted in a decryption of the files on the phone

Hathaway_Noa

Also something which bothers me, this guy has a telegram channel where he openly showcases his illegal activities (spamming phishing panels where he's looting people's bank accounts).

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