Alamar
March 4, 2016, 2:47am
1
Amazon quietly disabled encryption in the latest version of Fire OS
Locally stored data on Amazon Fire devices is no longer encrypted. Anyone who upgrades their Kindle Fire, Fire Phone, Amazon Fire HD, or Amazon Fire TV Stick to Fire OS 5 will have local...
Locally stored data on Amazon Fire devices is no longer encrypted.
Going to throw this up here and run. Just wondered if anyone saw this.
That is very disappointing, I hope they give a statement as to why they removed it.
1 Like
Kat
March 4, 2016, 3:08am
3
Isn't the back end of FireOS just Android?
Alamar
March 4, 2016, 3:34am
4
yes - which makes this pretty interesting. Wonder if Google will weigh in.
Kat
March 4, 2016, 3:34am
5
this could be solved with a custom rom. though in all reality, I don't think most people will do that. Cyanogen supports SELinux right out the Wazoo.
Summer
March 4, 2016, 4:17am
6
"And suddenly I no longer care about Amazon devices."
2 Likes
Token
March 4, 2016, 5:35am
7
Adds rebar to the already concrete resistance I have towards using any of their hardware. They try so obviously hard to herd people into their ecosystem and lock them in, I hate that- one of largest factors in avoiding apple products as well.
Alamar
March 4, 2016, 7:44am
8
Here's an interesting update to this story . . .
We contacted Amazon for comment, and the company told us that local device encryption support was removed in FireOS 5 because the feature wasn't being used:
"In the fall when we released Fire OS 5, we removed some enterprise features that we found customers weren’t using," Amazon told Ars. "All Fire tablets’ communication with Amazon’s cloud meet our high standards for privacy and security including appropriate use of encryption. "
In short, encrypted connections between the Fire tablets and external servers are safe (or, as safe as the server involved and the method of encryption being used will allow for), but thieves and law enforcement officials will be able to grab user data stored locally without much trouble.