Disguise-duress pin that lets you in a separate space on the phone

infinitieunique

If I am being pressured, blackmailed or in any other way forced to unlock my phone by (most commonly) the law enforcement/authorities or any other powerful adversary, I wouldn't want them to know that I gave them the "wrong" pin that erases the phone. I instead would want them to think that they did a good job searching through it and finding nothing.

de0u

infinitieunique The idea of a "stealth profile" is a natural idea that has been suggested many times.

The GrapheneOS developers have stated (also many times) that at present it's not possible to implement "stealth profiles" so that they are undetectable by motivated adversaries, and that they do not intend to implement such a feature if it would work only against low-ability adversaries.

Part of the problem is that it's easy to imagine how the feature would appear to the device owner and to an adversary, but making it actually work is much harder. Making it work without being detectable is infeasible at present.

I am fairly confident this will not be a GrapheneOS feature any time in 2026, and quite possibly never.

raccoondad

infinitieunique not how it works with android, sorry. GOS has commented on this multiple times.

Its not a feature that can be meaningfully implemented.

infinitieunique

de0u working against low-effort and low-motivation adversaries would be a lifesaver. You cant imagine how many times Ive been in a situation where somwone just took my phone, snooped through gallery and gave it back to me thinking it was "clean" not even bothering to open any other apps

Nobody

Not to mention given the current level of dev anything that opens any sort of a separate profile automatically just by a login pwd is going to increase the attack surface area. More secure in order: 1 fully locked phone before first unlock, 2 locked phone after first unlock admin profiles, 3: phone with a non admin profile unlocked that has no added data or apps other apps with the cheese. The goal of course is that profile user data can not be breeched between profiles. Still you are exposing far more with a unlocked profile.

When something like this will really be possible with a high level of security is when we get full development of secure VMs. It's moving that way and the good news is the way smart phone process architecture has developed vs PC it's going to be far more secure than the best PC based VM OS lhas to offer like Qubes which is the current best case std for PC security. PC security is basically untenable. It needs a clean slate from bare metal.

DeletedUser550

Duress pin, a badly named feature.
I know I will wait until I am in jeopardy then I will use the magic duress pin and everything will be fine and dandy.. I can just walk off into the sunset and all the LE and three digit agencies will curse under their breath. Ha ha..
Better still keep your vulnerable, stealable, seizable phone sanitized of things that get you into bother.
Wannabe James Bonds think Duress pin,
Clever people think good opsec...