If You're Concerned about Security Read This - Nook Color General

If like me, you lock your Android phone with a PIN (in case it gets lost, and you don't want whoever finds it to have access to... well, pretty much every sensitive piece of information you have) you need to take one precaution before doing the same on a rooted Nook Color running a custom ROM like Phiremod.
If you set a PIN in Phiremod (and I assume, other ROMs, too), you will find, much to your chagrin, that when you lock your device and try to unlock, the keypad for entering your pin is not shown in its entirety on your screen. You will only see a couple of buttons and will most likely be unable to enter your full PIN (and unable, in any case, to click OK when done). So you'll find you've locked yourself out of your nook and have to reflash to get back in (unless there's a hack I'm unaware of).
So before you go doing something dumb like this, be sure to go into "Spare Parts" and disable "Compatibility Mode." Once you do this, the unlock PIN keypad will show up full screen in its entirety and you'll be "good to go."

Or you could reboot and it will be fine.
That happened to me and I thought I was in trouble, but I turned it off and back on and it was fine.

danbutter said:
Or you could reboot and it will be fine.
That happened to me and I thought I was in trouble, but I turned it off and back on and it was fine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you saying that when you rebooted, the OS auto-adjusted? That would have been nice to know.

Same thing happened to me with Pattern Lock. Luckily my pattern was only using the top circles.

Related

[Q] Pattern lock -> Too many tries

I was playing around with the pattern lock and eventually got the 'Too many pattern attempts!' message, with it asking for my Google username and password to log in.
No matter what, it doesn't accept my username/password. I am 100% sure I've typed it in correctly.
This bug has been around for over a year with many people reporting 'bricked' phones without even doing anything particularly naughty with their phones.
This is the Google bug that has been posted on it: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=3006#makechanges
As you can see this has been around for over a year. The 'null'-in-password trick doesn't work, nor does the spamming-home-button trick.
My phone is rooted and with the Voodoo Lagfix-only custom kernel. Any suggestions?
Do a hard reset / wipe. That's my suggestion.
Try booting into recovery (Home Button, Vol Up + Power), and resetting your cache and wiping it. Then try logging in with your Google account. If all else fails, try changing your Google password on the PC then logging in on the phone. And then if it still fails, looks like you need to flash the phone again. Next time, don't enter the thing wrong! Stop rushing haha .
I wasn't rushing, I was playing with the lock. It takes about 30 times before it's permanently requiring the username/password. But really...you can't blame me for not expecting this. :/
I'm currently trying to flash a new ROM but I've run into another problem - I can't get it to boot into downloader/recovery. It's not the lack of the 3 button combo - I've managed to reach Recovery and Downloader ONCE each in the past, but never again since.
And now with all my efforts to boot into recovery/downloader, it now cannot boot into normal usability mode (or in my case, locked mode). Instead, the Galaxy S logo loops endlessly.
Sigh.
Have you read the thread for the fix for Galaxy S variants that are lacking the 3 Button Combos? It's in Android Development. Maybe try that? Or, can you still connect the phone and connect with Kies?
I can't turn on the phone anymore, meaning no changing to USB debugging etc. And I'm having problem accessing recovery/download, even though I definitely HAVE done each of them once before and therefore do not have the 3 button problem.
Without turning on my phone, Kies can't detect it
So what happens when you power on?
Now, it shows the first Galaxy S splash screen, then shows the boot logo, then nothing. The boot logo continues to glow endlessly.
Be patient, i waited up to five minutes. If you see the s logo glowing/shining youare ok
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
okpc said:
Be patient, i waited up to five minutes. If you see the s logo glowing/shining youare ok
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah it's continuously shining. Haven't left it for up to five minutes though... And even then it probably won't help since I'm still locked out of the phone, and unable to access download/recovery mode to reflash it.
After waiting for a long time, the logo disappears, screen goes black. Menu and back buttons light up. Nothing else.
Looks like your going to have to reflash your phone again. Download the desired firmware, open up Odin and put your phone into download mode and start the flashing procedure. Be more careful next time.
PaulForde said:
Looks like your going to have to reflash your phone again. Download the desired firmware, open up Odin and put your phone into download mode and start the flashing procedure. Be more careful next time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good advice considering he said his 3 button combo stopped working =))
All I did when I got that black screen was adb reboot recovery and wiped and phone bootedup fine. But only if you have debuging enable and and sumsung drivers. Hopes this help.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Can't enable USB debugging when phone can't be turned on at all.
danamoult said:
I was playing around with the pattern lock and eventually got the 'Too many pattern attempts!' message, with it asking for my Google username and password to log in.
No matter what, it doesn't accept my username/password. I am 100% sure I've typed it in correctly.
This bug has been around for over a year with many people reporting 'bricked' phones without even doing anything particularly naughty with their phones.
As you can see this has been around for over a year. The 'null'-in-password trick doesn't work, nor does the spamming-home-button trick.
My phone is rooted and with the Voodoo Lagfix-only custom kernel. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok i did the same thing, and spent hours googling.
Tried the key combinations to restore, but never worked.
Heres what worked for me, but, be warned all your contacts will be lost if stored on the phone.
From another phone, call your locked number.
Answer it on the locked phone, then hit the "back" button.
This gives you full access to the phones menus etc.
Hang up on the phone you called from.
Now, go into Applications / Settings / Privacy / Factory Data Reset.
This worked for me whereas all other methods did not.
Once your phone is up and running again, be sure to create your google account on your phone.
That way your protected again. If you didnt previously have the account set up from your phone, like i didnt, then you cannot log in of course.
This works...give it a try. Hope it helps.
danamoult said:
Can't enable USB debugging when phone can't be turned on at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you need to be able to enter recovery mode for you to solve this problem
danamoult said:
I was playing around with the pattern lock and eventually got the 'Too many pattern attempts!' message, with it asking for my Google username and password to log in.
No matter what, it doesn't accept my username/password. I am 100% sure I've typed it in correctly.
This bug has been around for over a year with many people reporting 'bricked' phones without even doing anything particularly naughty with their phones.
This is the Google bug that has been posted on it: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=3006#makechanges
As you can see this has been around for over a year. The 'null'-in-password trick doesn't work, nor does the spamming-home-button trick.
My phone is rooted and with the Voodoo Lagfix-only custom kernel. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
dear friend dont worry or panic... i'll tell you a trick , go to the samsung customer care and tell them that your phone gets heated up very often and today it just refuses to boot up normally...
since your device cannot get into recovery mode or download mode the company will never know that you had played with the system files in the device or not... (rooted )..
since the samsung people will also try to get your device in recovery mode.. but when it will not go to the recovery mode you will get a mother board replacement under warranty.....
this heating up of the device is a common problem in the galaxy here in india.. so use this excuse and i know it works 100% ... (just dont tell them that you had rooted and lagfixed your device )
What you describe sounds like a very large security hole if I am reading it correctly.
Are you saying that even if your phone has been locked out from too many lock screen failures, that just answering an incoming phone call gives you full access to the phone? Really?
I just checked on my phone and while I can answer an incoming call while the screen is locked, if I hit the back button or menu button, I just get the lock screen.
I'm missing something here...
OzzYGuY said:
Ok i did the same thing, and spent hours googling.
Tried the key combinations to restore, but never worked.
Heres what worked for me, but, be warned all your contacts will be lost if stored on the phone.
From another phone, call your locked number.
Answer it on the locked phone, then hit the "back" button.
This gives you full access to the phones menus etc.
Hang up on the phone you called from.
Now, go into Applications / Settings / Privacy / Factory Data Reset.
This worked for me whereas all other methods did not.
Once your phone is up and running again, be sure to create your google account on your phone.
That way your protected again. If you didnt previously have the account set up from your phone, like i didnt, then you cannot log in of course.
This works...give it a try. Hope it helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
distortedloop said:
What you describe sounds like a very large security hole if I am reading it correctly.
Are you saying that even if your phone has been locked out from too many lock screen failures, that just answering an incoming phone call gives you full access to the phone? Really?
I just checked on my phone and while I can answer an incoming call while the screen is locked, if I hit the back button or menu button, I just get the lock screen.
I'm missing something here...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
chill my dear friend.... it cant be true.... its just his 1st post.. and samsung cannot be so dumb to leave a password protected keypad that can be cracked so easily.. even i tried the back key on a call with a password lock.. i cannot get passed the lock screen....

NookColor reflashes itself back to stock?

something interesting happened to my NC last night. i was messing around with system apks, trying to get better access to the system settings. i copied Settings.apk and SettingsProvider.apk from the 2.1 emulator to /system/app the NC. they didn't work, so i replaced Settings.apk with the original, but forgot to replace SettingsProvider.apk. bonehead mistake. anyway, upon rebooting, the device was stuck in a bootloop. it would get to the white "Nook Color, by Barnes and Noble" boot animation, and just loop over and over. i tried the factory reset twice, but as i expected, it didn't help.
i decided to give up for the night, and left the NC plugged into AC power, bootlooping over and over, just to see if anything would happen. after about 30 minutes, i tried to shut it down by holding the power button. the screen went off, and i set it down. when i looked back a few seconds later, the NC was booting again. this time, it came to the screen shown in the attached photo. on the screen, it says "A new software update is being installed. This will take a few minutes."
the process finished, and the device booted up into a fresh, clean, non-rooted 1.0.0 installation! a real software update wasn't installed. it seems the device decided to reflash the original ROM on itself. can it be that the NC is smart enough to know when something is catastrophically wrong, and flash back to stock? either way, i'm happy to have my NC back in business
pokey and I were talking about this in another thread (though he's better at dissecting this stuff than I am). There's a counter for unsuccessful boot attempts, and after 8 it apparently flashes "factory.zip" from partition 3, which is a full clean factory dump.
This actually happened to me, sort of, two nights ago. I was messing around with system settings, but didn't change anything too important...or so I thought.
Shortly after, I was using my Nook, as it was working normally, and the initial setup screen popped up, said something about being unable to authorize my account, and then went ahead and factory reset itself,forcing me to have to re-root. Pretty annoying, and it was odd, since my Nook seemed to be working fine.
It may be worthwhile to make a modified factory.zip so devices wouldn't lose root, no?
I haven't yet encountered this problem, but it would suck to have to reformat my microSD card if this should happen.
tokyomonster said:
This actually happened to me, sort of, two nights ago. I was messing around with system settings, but didn't change anything too important...or so I thought.
Shortly after, I was using my Nook, as it was working normally, and the initial setup screen popped up, said something about being unable to authorize my account, and then went ahead and factory reset itself,forcing me to have to re-root. Pretty annoying, and it was odd, since my Nook seemed to be working fine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine did this exact same thing too. I messed with the settings apks and then when I went back to the B&N home screen an error about not being able to authorize and the device needed to be reset. then it rebooted and performed a reinstall of 1.0.0
clockworx said:
pokey and I were talking about this in another thread (though he's better at dissecting this stuff than I am). There's a counter for unsuccessful boot attempts, and after 8 it apparently flashes "factory.zip" from partition 3, which is a full clean factory dump.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well there you have it. a nice feature, for the reckless
any idea where the counter is kept?
might there be some way to put factory.zip on the SD card, and force a flash? this would just be a parachute in case something gets too messed up for the failed boot counter to work.
This can be done manually too. Look on nookdevs.com for NookColor_UnRooting
Withfeeling said:
This can be done manually too. Look on nookdevs.com for NookColor_UnRooting
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That isn't the same thing. It only fixes a few things (like Ramdisk, obviously), while this thread is referring to a complete clean /system.
clockworx said:
That isn't the same thing. It only fixes a few things (like Ramdisk, obviously), while this thread is referring to a complete clean /system.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
actually, in a quiet, unassuming box at the bottom of the nookdevs unrooting page, it does describe a method to flash back to stock. apparently you hold volume down (minus) while powering on. it's easy to miss. i'll break that bit of information out into it's own page.
Ben74 said:
actually, in a quiet, unassuming box at the bottom of the nookdevs unrooting page, it does describe a method to flash back to stock. apparently you hold volume down (minus) while powering on. it's easy to miss. i'll break that bit of information out into it's own page.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nookdevs wiki updated:
http://www.nookdevs.com/Flash_back_to_clean_stock_ROM
Given this possibility, is there a way to backup a rooted NC so it would be easier to rebuild after an inadvertant flash.
Some of us noticed that "quiet, unassuming box".
blacter said:
Given this possibility, is there a way to backup a rooted NC so it would be easier to rebuild after an inadvertant flash.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This, built-in, mechanism seems like a pretty bullet-proof protection against bricking your Nook Color. The Nook Classic has a similar mechanism. I think it's a great idea and I wish all these new tablets had such a capability.
I'm loving the Nook Color but other things require the money right now so it's going back, for now.
I just did the Home+Power key combination and it did a reset. I re-registered the device to make sure Angry Bird and a few other things were gone and they are. I got a notice at the bottom of the home screen saying something about a software update and it just said I was currently on 1.0.0, I clicked it and it went away. But, in Settings and Device Info there is a Erase & Deregister Device option. When I click the option it says the following "This will remove all digital books and files, including side-loaded content, from this device. The titles you have purchased will remain in your B&N account." I find this interesting since it specifically mentions "side-loaded content" and I'm wondering if this also triggers the 'factory.zip' file and as a complete factory hard reset of files and all. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else so I thought it might be worth mentioning.
Cheers

Getting back fingerprint unlock/pattern unlock after unlocking phone

Hello.
It's me again, and I have another problem. Damn machines like to play it hard (or maybe I'm just clicking wrong choices all the time).
Before unlocking my device via MiUnlock I got myself a finger scanned for quick unlocking the phone. It didn't work all the time but was a nice addition to pattern unlock. After unlocking my phone via fastboot mode I was on tour, and during driving, I was in need of screen being on. I turned off pattern/fingerprint unlock in order to get my beloved girl as a guide.
However, when I wanted to turn it on again today, after setting pattern, pin code or passlock, retyping (redrawing) it again and clicking "confirm"...nothing happens.
Is this the "feature" Xiaomi warned about before I was unlocking my phone on MiUnlock?
Can I somehow turn it on again? It seems like a bad joke, that your device can be secure ONLY when totally locked. And when You like to get root access - sorry mate, you are on your own.
Just to clarify - my MIUI is unchanged from the beginning 7.0 with latest possible update via OTA (all the way to 9.2.1.0 NCFMIEK version). I'm looking forward to swapping it for the new one someday, but I would like to know if there's another way around than just reflashing whole phone and reconfiguration process, that always took me much time. I'll get rid of preinstalled vanilla someday anyway, tbh, but I'm just curious. Also – will this be a thing and will it still occur, when I install some custom?
INB4 – buy yourself a car holder, lazy bastard.
INB5 – You could have changed screen awake time option anytime dude, wtf.
INB6 – You dunno anything about unlocking, get back into your cave and keep smashing stones.
INB7 - better try custom ROM... Time for a Change.

[SOLVED]Screen On Skips Notifications&Time Screen, goes straight toDraw Your Pattern

[SOLVED]Screen On Skips Notifications&Time Screen, goes straight toDraw Your Pattern
I need help. So, I did a nandroid backup, then reset and restored the nandroid backup, just to get rid of the tons of gigabytes of junk that i can never find out where it is that all my Android devices tend to clump up over time without me ever knowing why. (I've searched and searched the entire root and every folder and found absolutely nothing but that's not why I've come with questions today. If you have a quick answer on that too it'd also really help though).
Anyway, after the restore, my phone has started doing this weird thing where, when i turn on the screen, whether it's double tap to wake or on button, it shows a short flash of the notifications and time screen and then skips to the "Draw Your Pattern" screen. It's so annoying. I hate always having to unlock the phone just to see what time it is without having to read in the blink of an eye and wonder "wait did i read that right?". It's also made it really annoying because i used to be able to shut up alarms and reminders from the lock screen but now i have to unlock the phone and annoy other people for that much longer (especially when my phone lags).
Also, I've tried putting lock screen on "swipe to unlock" mode, and it works fine that way. The time and notifications show on the lock screen. But i can't just not have a pattern or etc on my phone.
I'm on rooted oxygen OS 3.5.3 with elemental x Kernel (it solved a bunch of Wi-Fi issues i was having with stock kernel). oh, and after the nandroid restore my phone is encrypted... I don't remember if it was or wasn't before. But just now when i forced restarted it for crashing so long and hard it asked me to "draw my pattern to start android" which it had never done before. Thankfully i knew my pattern unlike the other people searching about it online. Oh, and also, when i restored the nandroid backup, it also forgot my pattern and apparently replaced it with some nonsensical one. Seems to be a common bug with restoring from nandroid on twrp according to searches. Thankfully i also had a fingerprint so i was able to use that and then delete the files with the pattern lock and all that stored in the phone so i could set my pattern again. I honestly don't remember if the lock screen skipped to the draw your pattern screen before i deleted the lock screen files and set a new pattern. It was a long while ago and i was so frustrated at the time for having an unknown pattern that i wasn't thinking about whether i was having this issue or not ?. I don't know if any of this has to do with the problem I'm currently having, but i just thought I'd mention them just in case someone notices a correlation.
Thanks so much everybody!
Turns out at Some point i had accidentally flipped on Gravitybox's Direct Unlock feature which skips straight to the security challenge.

Recovery without losing data

I have a Moto G6 XT1925-5 (64GB version) which doesn't want to start up. It's all totally stock, been updated to Android Pie.
It gets as far as the boot animation, and does that for about 2 minutes, then it boot loops and starts all over again. When it bootloops it gets stuck at the first Moto logo screen (not the animated one) for about 3 minutes before carrying on to the boot animation...
This happened once or twice before, we left it overnight and eventually it started up normally. But it's now been five days and it still hasn't started.
I'm not very experienced with Android hacking/modding, etc but willing to try anything. I managed to get into recovery mode and at the top it says (I presume this indicates the firmware version):
motorola/ali_retail/ali
9/PPSS29.55-37-7-6/16c5a7
Unfortunately USB debugging is not enabled. Is there anything that we can do to recover the data that was on the phone before we wipe it - or is there another method we can try to get it to start up? I saw there's a command adb logcat which looks like it might be useful to diagnose the problem but that also requires USB debugging.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions
There is no chance for you to recover your data in this mode.
WoKoschekk said:
There is no chance for you to recover your data in this mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.
There are several other modes available from the bootloader BP Tools, QCOM, etc but I can't work out how any of them are supposed to work.
One question - on the recovery menu, there is an option 'Mount /system'.
I pressed it and it says at the bottom /system mounted, but then there don't seem to be any obvious ways to access anything.
Is there a way to use this to access OS/kernel logs which might give a clue as to what is going wrong?
Thanks again
Step by step...
The first level of the system, which is accessible for you, is called bootloader menu (fastboot menu). From here you can boot into recovery, system, bootloader itself and some other options you mentioned in your post.
None of these options would help you to solve your problem. These are developer's options.
This level is more or less a one way data connection. The main advantage of this menu is to flash single partitions of your device. But there is no way to get a data output of any partition.
In recovery menu you find the options to wipe your data and to mount /system. Mounting /system won't help you, too. This partition doesn't store anything of personal data. It's read only and not writable for anyone. To be honest, nobody knows exactly the meaning of it in this context. Also you won't access any logs from here.
Generally you can't access the system logs. These informations are only buffered data which is cleared with every reboot. The error message of e.g. the kernel log produced by your system when having a bootloop, is only accessible while your device is looping/freezing. The next reboot erases the logs. They aren't stored somewhere on your device. Even for developers it's very tricky to view the log in such cases.
But what would you do if you get the reason for looping? You are not able to access any system partition. You need root user permissions for that. But rooting your phone will erase all data.
Apart from all that your data is encrypted and remains encrypted until you unlock your screen by fingerprint, PIN or password. No chance to get any useful data as a "third person" outside. It would take several years to decrypt it without the matching key for it.
Thanks so much for this detailed explanation, I really appreciate that you took the trouble to answer the questions in detail and explain what the various options are for.
phone5774 said:
Thanks so much for this detailed explanation, I really appreciate that you took the trouble to answer the questions in detail and explain what the various options are for.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No problem!
Maybe you'll find some of your personal data in your Google Drive account...
How the story ended
Thought I'd come back and post in case it's useful for anyone else:-
Due to a religious festival, we left the phone switched off for three days. After the festival ended, we switched it on, and immediately it did the same thing that it had been doing all along (spend a long time on the initial boot screen then a while on the boot animation before boot looping). Bizarrely even though it had been off it did not prompt for the PIN code.
We then held the power button as though to turn it off (but for some reason, throughout the usual power button never actually turn the phone off, it always attempted to restart immediately) and then next time it came on it asked for the PIN and started up normally!
So all in all that was a grand total of 9 days after the problem first happened. Very inconvenient not to be able to use it for 9 days, but it's now working again. We haven't dared to try to restart it since!
Some closing thoughts:
The storage is very full (99%), we wonder if that had something to do with this problem
We have now enabled USB debugging and bootloader unlocking to make recovery easier in future
phone5774 said:
Thought I'd come back and post in case it's useful for anyone else:-
Due to a religious festival, we left the phone switched off for three days. After the festival ended, we switched it on, and immediately it did the same thing that it had been doing all along (spend a long time on the initial boot screen then a while on the boot animation before boot looping). Bizarrely even though it had been off it did not prompt for the PIN code.
We then held the power button as though to turn it off (but for some reason, throughout the usual power button never actually turn the phone off, it always attempted to restart immediately) and then next time it came on it asked for the PIN and started up normally!
So all in all that was a grand total of 9 days after the problem first happened. Very inconvenient not to be able to use it for 9 days, but it's now working again. We haven't dared to try to restart it since!
Some closing thoughts:
The storage is very full (99%), we wonder if that had something to do with this problem
We have now enabled USB debugging and bootloader unlocking to make recovery easier in future
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I read this last post, I immediately think of a sticky power button, because if you keep holding the power button after the phone has booted it will turn off again, and start up again. And it would also explain the weird behavior you just described of not turning off but rebooting straight away. I'd say: see if you are able to clean de button with a very thin needle or a crafts- or surgical knife around the edges, is might just solve your problem...
mcremco said:
When I read this last post, I immediately think of a sticky power button...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for that suggestion. Interesting, not something I'd thought of.
For now the phone is working perfectly, provided that have to restart it (i.e. we make sure not to shut it down or let the battery run out) but I'll definitely bear this in mind if the issue happens again.
The power button is working normally to turn the screen on or off meanwhile.
Thanks again for your input which is really appreciated.
First time trying to restart after the above
Since posting the above messages the phone has been kept on all the time and not restarted.
Today for the first time we accidentally let the battery run out and the phone shut itself down.
We nervously plugged it in and tried to switch it back on... and it started properly first time, so perhaps the underlying problem was simply that the storage somehow got too full (in the meanwhile we have transferred many photos and other media to the computer and deleted them off the phone to free up space).
Posting this in case it helps someone else experiencing a similar problem.

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