alt Hacker NewsFor those who don't know, automatic reboot restarts your device if you haven't unlocked it in a set amount of time. Cellebrite and other digital forensics companies are able to get into AFU devices much more often. The automatic reboot feature was first introduced by GrapheneOS and was later added to iOS and stock Pixels.
GrapheneOS's default is 18 hours and it can be set to between 10 minutes and 72 hours. iPhones and Stock pixels have it non customizable at 72 hours.
On GrapheneOS, for privacy and convenience, it's best to use a long random passphrase [1] for your primary unlock and then a fingerprint with a second factor pin as the secondary unlock. You enter the passphrase every time the device restarts.
If you're encountering someone that's going to seize your phone, try to restart/shut it down yourself so you don't have to trust the AFU protections.
[1] https://strongphrase.net give memorable ones which is cool.
Replies
Why not automatically power down if any unknown USB device is attached?
> On GrapheneOS, for privacy and convenience, it's best to use a long random passphrase
Why do you call out just one OS? It's a good idea for any OS.
Note that the iPhone also can be set to use a complicated password instead of a PIN and it will require it on first unlock.
>> then a fingerprint with a second factor pin as the secondary unlock
Unless you have a 4 or 4XL which are pretty popular with graphene os users. The weird thing is the 4 and 4XL are the only models without fingerprint because Google was pushing its #D Face Unlock System at the time.
The funny part is Graphene by default now disables face unlock on newer Pixel models.
People believed the reboot feature last time GrapheneOS was mentioned. It is of course nonsense.
Shut down the phone in areas with a high snatch risk. That means during landing for example, because the aircraft can be boarded covertly if on the ground.
Never use a website to generate a password for something important like this. You can print out diceware passwords and roll dice.