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Australian customs searched more than 40k devices in 5 years

itnews.com.au

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Re: Australian customs searched more than 40k devices in 5 years

#11

Post by DoItToMe81 »

CPAhem wrote: post #5
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #4

So apparently travelers have no legal obligation to provide their passcodes to the officers. Yet, "If a traveller exercises their right to refuse to provide a passcode, their device can be taken from the border and given to the ABF's digital forensic team for examination." So the alternative is not having access to your phone for at least 14 days. Losing access to your phone today is huge.. no 2FA codes means you're…

And while they've got your device, in Australia, the government can legally install rootkits on your phone or laptop without informing you.

IT employees can be legally obligated to sabotage or backdoor projects, too. Very nasty.

Re: Australian customs searched more than 40k devices in 5 years

#12

Post by throwawaymanbot »

CPAhem wrote: post #5
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #4

So apparently travelers have no legal obligation to provide their passcodes to the officers. Yet, "If a traveller exercises their right to refuse to provide a passcode, their device can be taken from the border and given to the ABF's digital forensic team for examination." So the alternative is not having access to your phone for at least 14 days. Losing access to your phone today is huge.. no 2FA codes means you're…

And while they've got your device, in Australia, the government can legally install rootkits on your phone or laptop without informing you.

No post body was provided.

Re: Australian customs searched more than 40k devices in 5 years

#13

Post by sakerbos »

CPAhem wrote: post #5
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #4

So apparently travelers have no legal obligation to provide their passcodes to the officers. Yet, "If a traveller exercises their right to refuse to provide a passcode, their device can be taken from the border and given to the ABF's digital forensic team for examination." So the alternative is not having access to your phone for at least 14 days. Losing access to your phone today is huge.. no 2FA codes means you're…

And while they've got your device, in Australia, the government can legally install rootkits on your phone or laptop without informing you.

Would a factory reset remove these root kits or backdoors?

Re: Australian customs searched more than 40k devices in 5 years

#14

Post by randomhodler84 »

sakerbos wrote: post #13
CPAhem wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And while they've got your device, in Australia, the government can legally install rootkits on your phone or laptop without informing you.

Would a factory reset remove these root kits or backdoors?

Hypothetically? Not necessarily as an attacker can stage malware in places that will survive a factory reset. Eg: Malware can live in firmware; or recovery volume not wiped in Factory Reset. An extremely resourced attacker could write malicious microcode to your CPU. Can’t reset that.

Realistically? it means CoTS gov grade malware like gamma finfisher etc, which should die when all persistent flash or disk storage is reset.

Practically, I would guess that it’s whatever the capabilities of Australian malware vendors are shipping feature wise for the products you are trying to protect.

“It depends on your threat model”.

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