Hi there,

A family member of mine works at a company that sells phones. Someone in the Warehouse accidentally opened a Pixel 7A and it's being offered to a few staff at less than half price.

I watched a youtube video about Graphene a while back but I'd just bought a new phone that wasn't a Pixel. I want to start playing with it on a secondary phone and a phone this cheap with another 5 years updates guaranteed seems like a great place to start.

I'm just concerned about it being unsealed. I trust the family member in question but who knows if they were given correct information. All I know is it's an unsealed phone. I would normally never accept one of these. That's not based on any real knowledge other than potential for tampering = bad.

Would installing GrapheneOS help with this? As in would it wipe anything potentially malicious that is on there?

Would appreciate any help. Please feel free to correct the notion that an unsealed phone is even bad, or suggest another way to completely wipe it of anything malicious that could be on there. Very much a n00b in all things infosec.

  • de0u replied to this.

    Warm-Builder-7438 If the phone was tampered with by a highly sophisticated actor, e.g., somebody who added monitoring hardware, that would be bad, but it seems unlikely.

    Otherwise, the regular GrapheneOS install process will fully wipe the phone. Just check the verified boot key fingerprint you will see on the yellow "other OS" screen after the installation (for most people, checking it one time is probably enough). Here are the fingerprints: https://grapheneos.org/install/cli#verified-boot-key-hash

      Also, unless it was some kind of Martin Scorsese familiy member of yours (none of my business in that case), why would anybody temper with the device and give it to you? Sure, be vigilant and make sure the boot key is correct, but unless you are some higher profile target I doubt that there is any sophisticated spyware installed.

      Thank you for your help! My Pixel is being dropped off soon and Graphene is going straight on it