Borealid 1 day ago

I don't understand how wear leveling makes deniability impossible. You just have to overwrite sectors in the false partition at the same rate as ones in the true partition. Since both the true and false partitions are encrypted, their contents are mathematically indistinguishable from randomness when viewed without the decryption key.

I also wish that GrapheneOS link didn't say a duress PIN forces the attacker to think twice about entering a PIN, knowing it could wipe the device. It doesn't do that for anyone aware of its existence, since of course the attacker can prevent the secure element from sending a delete command to the flash chip. Obviously if you know the device could attempt to delete itself you would break that feature before sending the code to the secure element...

krautsauer 1 day ago

Question on a detail: It's not necessary to have deniability on the fact that you did wipe your device, just on the fact that you did it after you entered the border? Or said differently, if he'd wiped the device before entering the border, it'd be all fine?

(That of course only takes down the "physically impossible" part.)

  • whaleofatw2022 1 day ago

    I do believe that yes, if it was wiped before entering, there would be no charges (unless there was a shadow docket open... that gets murky)

  • Jolter 20 hours ago

    Hence why travelers should simply not cross the border carrying sensitive data, ever. The Internet can take that data across the border for you.

ux266478 22 hours ago

I think you are vastly overestimating the amount of analysis that border guards are capable of.

  • Cider9986 12 hours ago

    Once it's a known feature, analysis finding out about it would be added to commercial forensic tools. Given the first two links, simply hooking up a computer to the unlocked phone would allow Cellebrite to give border guards the information that you are using a hidden partition in a user friendly UI.

    For example, documents like this[1] document any features that law enforcement should be aware of.

    [1] https://www.swgde.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/2025-08-21-...

cortesoft 1 day ago

You don’t need it to delete anything, anyway. The encrypted second partition is indistinguishable from random data, so you don’t need to delete it.