digg

Join DiggAbout

Donkeys and Elephants and Delegates,oh my!
Check out the most popular Elections 2008 content on Digg.

Paranoid about privacy? Careful restoring your iPhone, then

arstechnica.com — The "restore" procedure only superficially deletes your information from the iPhone or iPod touch: it turns out that forensic tools easily recover personal information.

Bury
show profanity settings
expand all
  • StusGhost, on 05/05/2008, -1/+4This so should get digged up. This is why digg dissapoints me :(
  • nahsrocketeer75, on 05/06/2008, -0/+1Uh, that certainly doesn't sound good.
  • agisten, on 05/06/2008, -0/+1I'm not surprised at all
  • sumeshpremraj, on 05/06/2008, -0/+1This isn't new - most memory subsystems are vulnerable to recovery of data.
    I wish there was a file shredder like those for computers ;)
    Dugg - we need to get the word about this around.
  • mattgilberg, on 05/06/2008, -0/+3How about someone write an article about the fact that almost every jailbroken iphone has the root account password set to "alpine"?
    • sholt, on 05/06/2008, -1/+1That's all iPhones, and it's only a big issue if sshd is running. At least MobileSafari runs as user 'mobile' now.
  • clesch, on 05/06/2008, -0/+1Hrm. I suppose you could always install the BSD subsystem and use dd if=/dev/urandom of=/ to overwrite everything on the phone. After that boot in recovery mode and restore. I tried this with a temporary file as output and it worked, although it's of course super slow. (around 500 kb/s).
    Question is if the iPhone boots from something other than the normal filesystem when you start it in the recovery mode. It should — but if not this method would brick any iPhone for good. :D
    • clesch, on 05/06/2008, -0/+1Actually, I just realized that the command wouldn't work as intended. You'd have to use the actual device as output.
  • mockidol, on 05/06/2008, -0/+0This would also apply to an iPod Touch which is of greater issue to me. Returned items at a store such as your local Best Buy are simply restored through iTunes and then resold as "Open Items". I'm guessing that second hand iPods are more common than second iPhones. (and yes iPhones are more likely to have phone numbers and whatnot but trust me, you'd be amazed at the stuff people keep on their iPods)
  •  

    Login or register to add a comment

    Create a new account or login to join in the conversation on Digg. You'll also be able to Digg stories to help promote things you like.


© Digg Inc. 2008 — Content posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain.
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.