ONYX v1.5-beta: Emergency PIN with a full decoy environment

Released v1.5-beta of ONYX, and one of the things we added is Emergency PIN support.

A secondary PIN opens a completely separate decoy environment instead of your real account. You configure what’s in it — chats, avatars, display names — so it looks like a normal, lived-in account. There’s no visual indicator that it’s a decoy.

The use case is straightforward: situations where you’re pressured into unlocking your messenger. The Emergency PIN is kept entirely separate from your main PIN and can be changed at any time.

Happy to answer questions.

  • wardcore@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    On mobile the key comes from the platform keychain — tied to device unlock, not the app. On desktop it’s machine-derived. The decoy PIN threat model is coercion — someone watching you unlock. If an attacker already has filesystem access, you’ve got bigger problems than the PIN.

    • CameronDev@programming.devEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      Machine derived decryption key is basically the same as unencrypted.

      Android story is better, but you effectively hold a backdoor. You can push an update that defeats the decryption without any user interaction.

      Ideally, decryption should involve the user inputting a pin or password.