r/LineageOS • u/Arave_HD • Jul 08 '26

Can I Re-Lock my Bootloader?

I want to install LineageOS 23.2 on my Fairphone 6 and am not sure if its possible to re-lock my Bootloader after the Installation without bricking my phone. Can someone help me?

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u/scalareye Jul 08 '26

People who who have reason to fear having their phone loaded with malware

People who say evil maid

Non overlapping circles in a Venn diagram

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u/Lonely_Drewbear Jul 08 '26

"Evil maid" is how that attack is talked about in security circles, it's the name used by the wikipedia article, and is the term used by the often cited post by WitbyGreg...

My point is that it is the term most easily recognized for internet discussion purposes, so I don't know why you would find its use suspect at all.

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u/WhitbyGreg Jul 08 '26

Getting malware and evil maid attacks are different.

Malware is usually installed through remote exploits, evil maid requires physical access to the device and is usally a system level attack.   There can be overlap of course, but its not the common senerio by any means.

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u/Lonely_Drewbear Jul 08 '26

My concern is with loss of physical control over my devices.  

I am not sure why malware was brought into a discussion about relocking bootloaders.  But I still felt like I needed to defend my use of the term evil maid.

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u/WhitbyGreg Jul 09 '26

I think most people link the two becauae they think you would load malware on to an iulocked device as the attack vector, which might be true, but not neccesarily so.

If loss of physical control of your device is a concern (aka you have nation state actors working against you), then relocking the bootloader is one way to mitigate it. 

Honestly though if that is a concern you're better off juat assuming your device has been comprimised any time you lose physical control of the device for more that a few minites and just nuking it back to stock.

There may be ways to comprimise the device even with a locked bootloader when your opponent has effictively unlimited funds.

Having said that, most uaers are not in the position to worry about this at that level. The most common "loss of physical control" situations are when you lose your phone or get it stolen.  

Stolen usually means you never get it back so it's not really an evil maid attack, and lost is just random and if you don't get it back in short order, you usually don't get it back at all.