websec.gr — privacy, forensics & defense

What GrapheneOS brings to the table

GrapheneOS adds hardened memory management, stricter sandboxing and tighter permission rules. That makes common bugs harder to turn into stable, weaponised exploits on real devices.

It also gives you fine‑grained switches: per‑app network and sensor access, storage scopes and profile isolation. One compromised app has far less room to move sideways.

It does not make you unhackable or invisible; it simply raises the cost for criminals, spyware vendors and some state‑level actors.

Defensive patterns for your phone

Keep the OS fully patched, reduce your app set and treat links and attachments as suspect until proven otherwise. Many attacks start with exactly one malicious message or website.

Limit background access to sensors and location, avoid shady app stores and keep backups and sync under your control instead of feeding every event into third‑party analytics.

The goal is to reduce what can be abused and to make compromise louder and shorter, not to promise perfect stealth or anonymity.

Why on‑premise secure messaging still matters

In high‑risk environments, outsourcing all communication to a public cloud is a big trust decision. On‑prem systems let organisations own their authentication, keys, logs and update cycle.

Done right, that reduces mass data‑mining and surprise feature changes, while still allowing proper logging and policy controls. The law and internal governance remain the frame; the tech is just sharper tools.

Preparing for post‑quantum threats

Post‑quantum cryptography uses algorithms designed to resist attacks from future quantum computers while still running on today’s hardware. Many serious systems are testing hybrid schemes that mix classical and PQC algorithms.

This is mainly about long‑term secrecy: protecting traffic recorded today from being decrypted years later. It is not a magic cloak, but part of a realistic roadmap for sensitive organisations.

The theme is consistent: stronger math, better key handling, and honest threat‑modelling about what needs protection and for how long.

When your backup and recovery tools are the weak link

Forensics and incident response depend heavily on backup and recovery platforms. Those platforms themselves see regular CVEs: privilege escalation, insecure deserialisation and arbitrary file deletion flaws in backup servers and console components. If an attacker takes over your backup system, they can quietly tamper with evidence or sabotage restores.

Treat backup and recovery stacks as crown‑jewel infrastructure: restricted access, separate credentials, strong monitoring and patching as soon as vendors publish advisories.

How to use CVE feeds without drowning in noise

Instead of tracking every CVE, map them to your reality. Which phones are in the field, which backup tools protect your data, which forensics or EDR products you rely on and which messaging apps your people actually use.

Then keep a small list of “must‑patch now” items tied to clear playbooks: update high‑risk devices, rotate keys where necessary, and review logs around the time window when an exploit was public and unpatched in your environment.

The point is not being perfect; the point is staying faster and calmer than the people trying to break in.

Guided defensive checklists

Use these links as anchors for your own notes and runbooks. Good defense is a habit, not a one‑time read.

Mobile device forensics – educational overview

A high‑level tour of how evidence lives on phones and how investigators clone and analyse it. It is about understanding the mechanics, not about teaching people how to hide crime.

High‑level storage forensics and data recovery

On classic hard disks, work usually starts with a write‑blocked, bit‑for‑bit image. From there, forensic tools rebuild partitions, detect file systems and recover deleted entries from the image instead of touching the original.

Failing drives may need partial imaging: grabbing the most important regions first, retrying weak sectors carefully and stopping before the disk destroys itself. RAID and NAS systems add another layer, where you must also preserve array layout and metadata or the recovered blocks are meaningless.

SSDs behave differently. Wear‑levelling and TRIM mean that “deleted” blocks can be physically wiped in the background. That improves performance and privacy, but limits deep undelete. Serious labs focus on imaging as early as possible and then use logical recovery and file carving on those images.

Across HDDs and SSDs, the principle stays the same: stabilise the hardware, capture the cleanest image you can, then do all analysis and recovery on copies with a clear chain of custody.

How AI helps digital forensics (with humans in charge)

AI can cluster chats and emails, flag anomalies in logs, highlight suspicious images and speed up the search for relevant evidence. It turns “impossible to read everything” into “possible to find the right slice”.

But AI is not a judge. Serious labs treat it as a powerful filter and assistant, while human analysts decide what is relevant, how to interpret it and how to present it in a legal or internal process.

Think of it as a microscope: it lets you see more, faster, but you still need trained eyes and a solid methodology.