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GrapheneOS duress PIN could land a man in prison
(www.androidauthority.com)
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this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2026
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GrapheneOS should update the duress passcode to load a dummy profile like Only Key’s Plausible Deniability Feature.
Loading any profile allows the operating system access to root privileges, and opens potential for user privilege escalation.
The profiles are independently encrypted with a key derived from the user's profile PIN. If the other profiles are not logged in then their keys are not in RAM (and they get zeroed beforehand so they can't be read out of unallocated memory).
Even if the bad guys get root via a LPE in a dummy account there are no keys to find and the profiles' storage are not mounted.
You couldn't trust the device after that however, who knows what kind of persistent spyware they could have installed.
Then it should delete the data while loading a dummy profile
That would be an interesting proposition... under duress load profile x and delete all other profiles, apps, settings and keys.
Or maybe a lighter version of the duress pin that just loads the fake profile (or alternate profile) but leaves the other(s) intact.
If you're just handing your phone over for a border pig to swipe through before waving you through that might be adequate.
It depends on whether you believe forensics can recover the data when handed over. So make it a setting
Yeah I was thinking of this as a half measure. But less secure than just wiping