security - Application for remote-wiping a lost phone without handing access to my data to a third-party?

Or having to pay a subscription?

I have an idea for a hypothetical Android app. Tell me if such a thing already exists.

1. You install a server in a machine you have total control of, and is (preferably, but not obligatorily) online 24/7.


2. You install the client app on your phone. You configure it to connect to the hostname/port the server you installed in #1 is listening to.


3. The client app does a connect every 5 minutes or so. (Configurable.) It backs up your data to your server machine if you configured it to do so.


4. Your phone is lost or stolen.


5. You connect to yourcomputer:yourport and feed it the Nuking Password. The server app hashes your Nuking Password and stores it at a predefined location (i.e. yourcomputer:yourport/Nuke)


6. Like in every watchdog connect, your phone tries to download yourcomputer:yourport/Nuke - but this time it succeeds. It then hashes its own locally stored copy of the Nuke Password and, if it's a match, it nukes all data in the phone. Before doing the pieces of nuking that will kill Internet access, it reports to the server that the nuke command went through.

Can be improved, of course. But tell me, is there a FOSS app like that somewhere? I imagine it would be especially neat for businesses that issue smartphones for a number of employees.

Answer

I don't know of an app that meets your exact requirements. But a simpler version that's (in my opinion) equally secure is an Android app that listens for a specific SMS message, and wipes the phone. Remote Wipe does this. Of course, it doesn't entirely kill the phone's software (that would be very device-specific and require a modified bootloader in most cases); and it might be useful to use one of the apps that reports the phone's physical location too, if you want to recover it.