A device that has left your control, or that no longer shows a clean boot state, is not a device to keep using for sensitive work while you decide. The next hour is about closing sessions and getting onto a channel that is not the handset.
Panic control
Where the build includes a panic control, it locks the handset, ends live sessions, and presents a neutral screen. It is there so a phone taken from your hand is not an open session. It does not rewrite history, and it is not a tool for destroying records. Use it when you need the screen locked now. Then treat the device as suspect until you have it back and have checked the boot state yourself.
Tripwires
If a canary file was touched, the device may already have locked itself silently or entered decoy mode. When you unlock it again with your real passphrase, Sentinel shows which decoy was opened and when. Treat that as proof that something swept the storage. Follow the steps below even if the phone now looks normal.
Loss or seizure
- Assume the passphrase is the boundaryIf the screen was locked, the lock is what you are relying on. If it was open, assume the session was readable.
- Move the conversationTell the people who need to know, from a different channel, that this device should not be trusted until you say otherwise. Do not send that notice from the suspect handset.
- Replace secrets that lived on itAny credential that existed only on the device, or that was unlocked on screen, should be rotated from a machine you still trust.
- Do not “check it” on an unknown cableA computer you do not control is not a safe place to inspect a suspect phone. Charge from a dumb adapter if you must power it, and boot it only long enough to read the verified-boot state.
Talking to CODES LTD
Use the contact channel on your invoice. State the reference, what happened, and what the boot indication showed. We will not ask you to read out the passphrase or to install a remote-access tool. If the message you receive does, it is not the engagement.
A suspect device is cheaper to replace than a conversation that continued on it. The fleet exists so that replacement is a provisioning problem, not a forensic one.