Root CWM & Backup Security

[rcsrich]

So I've been in the mode of thinking about mobile security & wondering if there is a way to have CWM encrypt ROM backups. I worry that if someone were to walk off with my phone, it would be super easy to pull out the SD card & unzip the latest ROM backup & have access to all my data- no need to try & unlock the phone itself. I have a remote lock/wipe service set up, but in the individual is smart enough to put the phone in airplane mode while they try to unlock it, the SD card is especially vulnerable. Another simple solution is to immediately copy backups to a PC & then delete them off the SC card, but it would be nice to have then encrypted by default.

I know that a thief will find a way into your phone given enough time (good reason to keep ADB disabled unless you are using it for dev work I guess), but I'd like to be as safe as I can reasonably be without making it a pain to use my phone.

Thoughts?

 

[dsmryder]

So I've been in the mode of thinking about mobile security & wondering if there is a way to have CWM encrypt ROM backups. I worry that if someone were to walk off with my phone, it would be super easy to pull out the SD card & unzip the latest ROM backup & have access to all my data- no need to try & unlock the phone itself. I have a remote lock/wipe service set up, but in the individual is smart enough to put the phone in airplane mode while they try to unlock it, the SD card is especially vulnerable. Another simple solution is to immediately copy backups to a PC & then delete them off the SC card, but it would be nice to have then encrypted by default.

I know that a thief will find a way into your phone given enough time (good reason to keep ADB disabled unless you are using it for dev work I guess), but I'd like to be as safe as I can reasonably be without making it a pain to use my phone.

Thoughts?

It would have to be incorproated into CWR. Or at least maybe something that could be done to the directory that holds the parts of the backup. Then it may be just a small inconvience. You could push to something like dropbox. I have a link in my signature. Then you would have it anyware you have internet service.

And to keep it smaller, you could clear your caches before backing up. I flash a (whole) ton. I have to backup before each one so I can test and pray the new fix doesn't ruin something.LOL

 

[rcsrich]

It would have to be incorproated into CWR. Or at least maybe something that could be done to the directory that holds the parts of the backup. Then it may be just a small inconvience. You could push to something like dropbox. I have a link in my signature. Then you would have it anyware you have internet service.

And to keep it smaller, you could clear your caches before backing up. I flash a (whole) ton. I have to backup before each one so I can test and pray the new fix doesn't ruin something.LOL

Yeah, I figure that until an encryption option is available in CWR, I'll likely just copy the backups to my PC & delete from the SD card once I feel "safe" with a ROM & copy them back if I need to recover. I don't switch ROMs often enough for it to be too big a pain. It's cool that you can unzip a backup if need be to pull out specific files, but on the other hand, uncool in the hands of evildoers.

 

[dsmryder]

Yeah, I figure that until an encryption option is available in CWR, I'll likely just copy the backups to my PC & delete from the SD card once I feel "safe" with a ROM & copy them back if I need to recover. I don't switch ROMs often enough for it to be too big a pain. It's cool that you can unzip a backup if need be to pull out specific files, but on the other hand, uncool in the hands of evildoers.

I was looking at my ES file explorer. When I long press on a file or folder it gives me an option to encrypt. I know whyzor added something to his line CM7 that enabled encryption of some sort too.

 

[RolaAddict]

Here is a little something that might help with your worries.If you go into your backup and delete just one thing,could be anything even a useless app,the backup can no longer be used at all.So no one that has another Triumph can just use your backup to get all your info.I also think that if you encrypt anything it will also make your backup useless til you un-encrypt it.My advice is to use the 2GB SD card that came with the phone to store your backups on.That way if your phone is stolen your backup data is safe,but you have to have lookout or ESET on your phone to erase your phone data that's already on it.Also having it on the 2GB SD card is better than putting it on your computer if you don't have good anti-virus software on your computer.To me its the safest way to go.

 

[rcsrich]

I was looking at my ES file explorer. When I long press on a file or folder it gives me an option to encrypt. I know whyzor added something to his line CM7 that enabled encryption of some sort too.

Right- I guess another option is to encrypt after the fact, then decrypt before doing a restore.

 

[rcsrich]

Here is a little something that might help with your worries.If you go into your backup and delete just one thing,could be anything even a useless app,the backup can no longer be used at all.So no one that has another Triumph can just use your backup to get all your info.I also think that if you encrypt anything it will also make your backup useless til you un-encrypt it.My advice is to use the 2GB SD card that came with the phone to store your backups on.That way if your phone is stolen your backup data is safe,but you have to have lookout or ESET on your phone to erase your phone data that's already on it.Also having it on the 2GB SD card is better than putting it on your computer if you don't have good anti-virus software on your computer.To me its the safest way to go.

Using a second SD card is another good option, and I just swapped out my 8 for a 16 GB & copied all the contents, so I still have the 8 with all my previous backups.

I'm not so worried about another Triumph owner getting hold of my backup & doing a restore as much as I am someone downloading on to a PC, unzipping it and opening app data files to get account info, etc. Maybe some of that credential stuff is encrypted anyway by default, but seems like someone could probably figure out how to extract an awful lot of personal data if they had the smarts.

 

[GrandTheftBJJ]

Great suggestinos, glad I took a minute to read this thread. I already use ES File Explorer, so compressing/encrypting the backups was a cool feature to find out about. And the extra SD card is a good option also, I have a few spare small cards (2-4GB) that came with other phones and would be good to use for just storing backups since CWR backups do take up significant space on your "everyday use" card.

Thanks dsmryder and rcsrich