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by CPAhem 1470 days ago
And while they've got your device, in Australia, the government can legally install rootkits on your phone or laptop without informing you.
2 comments

IT employees can be legally obligated to sabotage or backdoor projects, too. Very nasty.
Would a factory reset remove these root kits or backdoors?
Hypothetically? Not necessarily as an attacker can stage malware in places that will survive a factory reset. Eg: Malware can live in firmware; or recovery volume not wiped in Factory Reset. An extremely resourced attacker could write malicious microcode to your CPU. Can’t reset that.

Realistically? it means CoTS gov grade malware like gamma finfisher etc, which should die when all persistent flash or disk storage is reset.

Practically, I would guess that it’s whatever the capabilities of Australian malware vendors are shipping feature wise for the products you are trying to protect.

“It depends on your threat model”.