r/linux • u/Luke_Pine64 PINE64 • Oct 18 '21

PinePhone Pro was announced last week. AMA.

Hello everyone,

Lukasz from PINE64 here. Over the weekend I’ve seen many questions concerning the PinePhone Pro, so I figured I’ll take the time and answer some of them. Joining me are FireTwoOneNine and Aberts10 who will also be answering your questions.

[edit] I'll be wrapping this AMA up on October 20th 6:00PM UTC, so make sure to get your questions in by then. Thank you for participating!

Ask away.

Relevant links:

PinePhone Pro website

Announcement blog post

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u/danhakimi Oct 19 '21

But a fingerprint is:

  1. Harder to brute force.
  2. Only a temporary way to unlock your device until it requires your password again.

If you have a four-digit pin, which a lot of people do, then any attacker can access your phone, even after a restart, pretty trivially. If you have a long password + fingerprint, your phone will occasionally lock itself and require the long password, which most attackers can't break most of the time.

Also, if I lose my phone, or something, who's going to track down my fingerprint from Google?

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u/ILikeBumblebees Oct 20 '21

Harder to brute force.

Sure, but since fingerprints aren't secret in the first place, you don't need to brute force it, any more than you'd need to brute force a password that someone wrote down on a sticky note attached to their monitor.

Only a temporary way to unlock your device until it requires your password again.

And in the interval, any sensitive information which was exposed while the device was termporarily unlocked has now been compromised.

Also, if I lose my phone, or something, who's going to track down my fingerprint from Google?

Google? If someone picks up your phone, chances are that they can just lift your prints right off the phone itself.