1

Besides requiring a lock screen, are there any downsides to encrypting an Android device (using the native encryption)?

For example:

  • is there a performance decrease?
  • is there a temperature increase?
  • is there a battery consumption increase?
  • are there any data integrity issues?
  • does it make anything more difficult (besides requiring a lock screen)?
End Anti-Semitic Hate
  • 4,400
  • 23
  • 61
  • 100
  • What kind of encryption? FBE or FDE? In one you need to enter your password to even access your basic phone functions – beeshyams May 04 '20 at 16:17
  • @beeshyams I'm open to both possibilities. – End Anti-Semitic Hate May 04 '20 at 16:23
  • 2
    Theoretically there should be somewhat impact on performance, temperature and battery. But that's negligible, and even unnoticeable even if you try to observe. A downside is difficulty in data recovery when password/key goes wrong or phone is dead. It's obviously a trade-off between security/privacy and data recoverability. – Irfan Latif May 04 '20 at 16:30
  • @IrfanLatif Recovery on a dead phone is an interesting concern I hadn't thought about sufficiently. Is there no standard way to accomplish this, given that you have the correct password? – End Anti-Semitic Hate May 04 '20 at 16:32
  • 1
    @RockPaperLizard no. Password isn't of any use due to hardware-backed encryption. See How to get data off a completely dead Android phone? – Irfan Latif May 04 '20 at 16:36
  • @IrfanLatif Upvoted! Even if you can get in to a bootloader, it sounds like the password would not help, since the encryption is hardware-backed. Is my understanding correct? – End Anti-Semitic Hate May 04 '20 at 16:42
  • 1
    @RockPaperLizard correct. But there are some proof of concept hacks that worked in past for brute-forcing the encryption when the device was able to boot into bootloader stage at least. But such possibilities are near to none. // Also an accidental factory reset over encryption makes data recovery nearly impossible. See https://android.stackexchange.com/a/214496/218526 and https://android.stackexchange.com/a/216410/218526 – Irfan Latif May 04 '20 at 16:48
  • please note hardware-backed encryption is not a protection for unlocked or by-passed bootloader - once you get in, the only protection is screen lock password! even worse a lot devices do not even use screen lock credentials (they simply use default_password for FDE) – alecxs May 05 '20 at 07:06

0 Answers0