It was hot. I don't think the phone was necessarily feeling the heat like me... but... the way it was acting... maybe so?
The second to last day of my vacation at Walt Disney World (first time!), my S8+ started acting wonky. I tried to take pictures and the application wouldn't work right.
So, I rebooted.
Now, I'm staring at a screen with a textbox at the bottom of the screen and some text near it (I don't recall it verbatim) "Enter your emergency password".
What? What's an emergency password? Typing in the textbox, it was obvious that it wasn't a numeric-only textbox (for PINs) but it was alpha-numeric. I simply don't recall registering anything but a pin and my fingerprints.
Freaking out, I kept trying to restart and worked with the power and volume buttons.
All I continued to see was the Samsung logo.
Suddenly, I got a black screen with text telling me things were being erased. I then see a blue screen with an android bot telling me stuff was being erased.
After a bit, I was back at the language selection.
Gone. Pictures. Data. SSD... entire phone... fully erased. (Thankfully, a majority of my pictures were immediately put into Instagram... the lost pictures I used the phone's camera app because it works better than the Instagram camera).
Don't have my laptop... so I don't have my password database, so I cannot get into ANY applications.
I know there are requirements for Microsoft Exchange, and other applications that require special security for being a device administrator... I'm not aware of Exchange requiring a password for the phone but... who knows? I didn't enter the password wrong too many times.... even as hot as it was I still used my print to unlock the phone.
Man, that is horrible. My condolences. If you can boot the phone into recovery mode (Hold down volume up, then the Bixby button & then the power button...all at once). Once in recovery, do a factory reset and you shouldn't have to enter that 'Emergency Password'. Unfortunately, everything is lost unless you ran a backup into the cloud or on your 'puter.
Sorry for the post if you've already reset the phone as it sounds like you might have since you mentioned the language screen.
TheBigEasy88 said:
Man, that is horrible. My condolences. If you can boot the phone into recovery mode (Hold down volume up, then the Bixby button & then the power button...all at once). Once in recovery, do a factory reset and you shouldn't have to enter that 'Emergency Password'. Unfortunately, everything is lost unless you ran a backup into the cloud or on your 'puter.
Sorry for the post if you've already reset the phone as it sounds like you might have since you mentioned the language screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I didn't have the choice -- the phone decided to reset to a fresh install point. Once I got back home I restored to a previous backup after trying everything I could to undelete stuff on my SDCARD.... but none of the software I tried would work... kudos Samsung... your deletion of my SDCARD was VERY complete...
Did you have the SDCard stand alone or merged with the internal storage? I'm surprised that got wiped also.
Chris Dickerson said:
It was hot. I don't think the phone was necessarily feeling the heat like me... but... the way it was acting... maybe so?
The second to last day of my vacation at Walt Disney World (first time!), my S8+ started acting wonky. I tried to take pictures and the application wouldn't work right.
So, I rebooted.
Now, I'm staring at a screen with a textbox at the bottom of the screen and some text near it (I don't recall it verbatim) "Enter your emergency password".
What? What's an emergency password? Typing in the textbox, it was obvious that it wasn't a numeric-only textbox (for PINs) but it was alpha-numeric. I simply don't recall registering anything but a pin and my fingerprints.
Freaking out, I kept trying to restart and worked with the power and volume buttons.
All I continued to see was the Samsung logo.
Suddenly, I got a black screen with text telling me things were being erased. I then see a blue screen with an android bot telling me stuff was being erased.
After a bit, I was back at the language selection.
Gone. Pictures. Data. SSD... entire phone... fully erased. (Thankfully, a majority of my pictures were immediately put into Instagram... the lost pictures I used the phone's camera app because it works better than the Instagram camera).
Don't have my laptop... so I don't have my password database, so I cannot get into ANY applications.
I know there are requirements for Microsoft Exchange, and other applications that require special security for being a device administrator... I'm not aware of Exchange requiring a password for the phone but... who knows? I didn't enter the password wrong too many times.... even as hot as it was I still used my print to unlock the phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The only reason I see for this to happen is if on the "lock Screen and Security", inside the "Secure Lock Settings" have enabled the "Auto factory reset".
Biometrics won't trigger a device wipe, they will only force the pin/password field on too many attempts.
You say Exchange. Is this a corporate account? Is there a possibility that someone remotely wiped your device? Log into OWA (the web interface of your Exchange), navigate to Options -> See All Options, then click the Phone tab and see if a wipe was sent to it. Because what you described sounds a lot like a remote wipe. (Though I've never seen the emergency password field.)
Also make sure that you're not violating your corporate policies. Granting admin access to the Exchange app gives your company full control over your device. They can see you accessing your email with it, and if you're doing something that you shouldn't be, they will wipe your device.
mcnascimento said:
The only reason I see for this to happen is if on the "lock Screen and Security", inside the "Secure Lock Settings" have enabled the "Auto factory reset".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No way of knowing but I don't recall ever setting that (I wouldn't).
something corrupted your ROM it sounds like, somehow!
if it was the red box that says like "enter password" I believe it is actually "default_password"
Related
Ok, so far I've dumped the ROM and uploaded the kaiser-HardSPL and all was going lovely. However, after most of a day of pretty much inactivity I find the device suddenly goes very slowly. By which, I mean it can take several seconds to draw the screen.
Thinking this might be a rogue application using up all the processor cycles, I poked it up the bottom with the stick. (While doing this the first time, I held in power and camera just to see the boot loader text, but then I did it again with no buttons held.) It's a Vodafone device but it sat on the Vodafone splash screen for about 2-3 minutes then spent longer than that on the Windows Mobile screen before eventually dropping me into normality.
Except it's incredibly slow normality - I clicked on "start" and after a minute, it's not done anything yet.
Next step is a hard reset unless anyone has any better suggestion?
Help!
I assume you've pulled the battery?
Never assume anything... The full answer is, "No, but I have now"... I'm not sure that's going to do anything more than a soft (poke up the bottom) reset though. I'm now just waiting for the splash screen to subside while I'm typing this.
Having left it half an hour, while it went into standby and after noticing that the clock had stopped updating, I'm of the opinion that the already slow device has got slower...
Ok between 1 and 2 minutes to move from the splash screen to the "Windows Mobile" screen.
Now there's a turn up... After a further minute or so, I get a message, which has now cleared and gone back to the "Windows Mobile" screen before I had chance to copy it here. Basically it said that it had failed to boot either because I'd turned it off improperly or I'd installed something that it was opposed to. I should press send (I guess the green button) to reset to manufacturer's defaults.
Since that's my next stage anyway, I'll re-poke it with the pointy stick and press 'send' when it pops the message up. I'll put my trusty old Nokia N73 into flight mode and take a picture of the message so I can transcribe it here for everyone's amusement.
More news as it breaks.
I've now hit the 'send' button so it's doing a hard-reset. Meanwhile, here's the text it showed me:
Code:
The device is unable to boot be-
cause either you have turned off
the device incorrectly or tried to
install an application from untrusted
source. Press SEND to reset your
device or press any other button
to cancel. This operation will delete
all your personal data and restore
the device to its factory default
settings.
Nice. Ok, I'm at the 'tap the screen to set up your device' screen now.
Wonder what triggered all that nonsense then...
If you're like the rest of us and tooling around the all the fun programs in this forum, there's no telling.
I tell folks on computers, "Every piece of software you put on a machine is a liability to the operation of that machine." We can say that applies to this nifty little devices too.
I've had my phone experience the same symptoms you have posted here. Luckly for me a battery pull fixed mine. Sounds like the luck didn't spread much. Sorry.
Keep at it though. And don't fret the crashes. They do happen from time to time when you play hard.
So, a hard reset and a restore of a backup (Yes, I made a backup a few days ago even though I've been in the trade 20 years!) later, I'm back to normality. All I've done that's weird is install pof's loader and I can't see that's anything to do with it. What I was doing at the time of the slowdown was trying to connect to the wifi network at work. I thought the networking had just got itself tied in knots somehow but as the machine was even mega slow to boot, I can't really see that. At least I can still get back to square one at the moment.
I just need to create a .nbh out of the rom parts I dumped yesterday so that I can recover from anything more major...
Meanwhile, if you do a 'boot loader reset', would you expect it to say 'serial' if the USB isn't plugged in?
I'm starting to wonder if there is a major bug in the WiFi of the Tilt. There are some other threads on AT&T's site about this, and my work with WiFi on this unit has been dicey. Hmmmmm...
I have a Google Galaxy Nexus bought unlocked from Google about two weeks ago.
A few hours ago, I seem to have unintentionally locked myself by setting both a PIN and PUK. I was not aware that I was setting anything more than a 4 digit PIN. Whatever a PUK might be, is not explained in the manual printout here in front of me.
I was presented with a numeric keypad screen that wanted me to set (reset?) both. Across the top of the screen I was getting a marquee saying I needed a min of 8 characters and below that, a field for PIN and a field for PUK (it would have nice to at least once be told what that acronym stands for).
Cancel only just turns off the screen (not the phone). Same with OK.
So, I did power off. But when I turned power back on I get that same screen and the phone is locked.
So, I read the manual again. No real help on how to have avoided this or how to get out of this trouble.
I searched the net. I found instructions somewhere that told me I could do a factory rest that would loose all data, etc. Since I have only had this phone for a short while and done little to customize it, I could live with that. My mail, calendar and photos are synched to my desktop.
So, I followed the instruction for factory reset (and took note that the manual with this expensive device is no help with this important function nor does it give me a phone number for support. Shame on someone for that decision.)
1. power off
2. hold volume button
3. hold power button
That returned a screen with a large Anroid character, plus a large right facing arrow containing the word "Start" in the arrow. Beneath the android it says "Downloading. Do not turn off target!!" The double exclamation marks suggest this is to be obeyed.
Another aside to whoever designed this thing. the first rule of communication is, "The effectiveness and efficiency of any message is 100% the responsibility of the sender." The corollary to that is, do not use jargon or technical terms unless you include a definition.
So, what or who is a "target?" Other than a set of concentric cirles and the name of the place my wife buys Martha Stewart sheets , I know no other target.
BTW - if I am supposed to touch the arrow to launch something (and perhaps turn off the target?) it's a waste. After 15 minutes of no action, I touched it. Nothing happened.
So now I have a screen that tells me to not do something, leaving me with the fear of doing anything at all. And even if I should do something, like touch the Start, nothing happens. Now close to 1/2 hour has passed and the "downloading" message is unchanged. WTF is it downloading? Anything at all?
Do I now own a warm paperweight whose enigmmatic screen will go dark in a few hours?
Or can I do something that actually works?
Thank you for your patience in reading this. The book Alice In Wonderland was shorter and much more interesting.
Any useful suggestion will be appreciated.
update on stuck reset
After the phone sat here onm desk for a few hours, with that same screen and warning (do not close target). I picked up the phone to move it to the side.
When i grabbed it, I accidentally squeezed the power button. That ascreen wnet away and then it blinked back to the screen tthat wants the PUK and PIN.
Any idea wht to do from here?
As I said at the start, I am willing to do a factory reset. Obviously I do not know how.
Advice, please?
Easy.
joehark said:
I have a Google Galaxy Nexus bought unlocked from Google about two weeks ago.
A few hours ago, I seem to have unintentionally locked myself by setting both a PIN and PUK. I was not aware that I was setting anything more than a 4 digit PIN. Whatever a PUK might be, is not explained in the manual printout here in front of me.
I was presented with a numeric keypad screen that wanted me to set (reset?) both. Across the top of the screen I was getting a marquee saying I needed a min of 8 characters and below that, a field for PIN and a field for PUK (it would have nice to at least once be told what that acronym stands for).
Cancel only just turns off the screen (not the phone). Same with OK.
So, I did power off. But when I turned power back on I get that same screen and the phone is locked.
So, I read the manual again. No real help on how to have avoided this or how to get out of this trouble.
I searched the net. I found instructions somewhere that told me I could do a factory rest that would loose all data, etc. Since I have only had this phone for a short while and done little to customize it, I could live with that. My mail, calendar and photos are synched to my desktop.
So, I followed the instruction for factory reset (and took note that the manual with this expensive device is no help with this important function nor does it give me a phone number for support. Shame on someone for that decision.)
1. power off
2. hold volume button
3. hold power button
That returned a screen with a large Anroid character, plus a large right facing arrow containing the word "Start" in the arrow. Beneath the android it says "Downloading. Do not turn off target!!" The double exclamation marks suggest this is to be obeyed.
Another aside to whoever designed this thing. the first rule of communication is, "The effectiveness and efficiency of any message is 100% the responsibility of the sender." The corollary to that is, do not use jargon or technical terms unless you include a definition.
So, what or who is a "target?" Other than a set of concentric cirles and the name of the place my wife buys Martha Stewart sheets , I know no other target.
BTW - if I am supposed to touch the arrow to launch something (and perhaps turn off the target?) it's a waste. After 15 minutes of no action, I touched it. Nothing happened.
So now I have a screen that tells me to not do something, leaving me with the fear of doing anything at all. And even if I should do something, like touch the Start, nothing happens. Now close to 1/2 hour has passed and the "downloading" message is unchanged. WTF is it downloading? Anything at all?
Do I now own a warm paperweight whose enigmmatic screen will go dark in a few hours?
Or can I do something that actually works?
Thank you for your patience in reading this. The book Alice In Wonderland was shorter and much more interesting.
Any useful suggestion will be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just go to the shop you got the SIM and they will unlock it for you with a new PUK code!
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Hacked, Touchscreen unresponsive
Hi! I need help with my tablet.
Device: Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Tablet, model GT-P5113 TS. This model doesn't have a way to yank out the battery.
What's wrong: Touchscreen is not responding.
Current state: Attempting to drain the battery. Doesn't appear to be turned on. Factory reset apparently performed.
What happened: Sorry, this is long. It is as best as I can remember it. It may be somewhat inaccurate.
Yesterday evening, I was on my Windows laptop and logged into my Google account. I *thought* I used the Google Play Store to install Chrome to the tablet. (I had looked at the html5test website and it said Chrome had a higher HTML5 rating than the Dolphin/Jetpack browser I've been using on my tablet.)
But something went terribly wrong.
After sending Chrome to it, I unlocked the tablet and used both Chrome and Dolphin to go to html5test website. They both scored the same or nearly the same. I don't know if any of that is relevant, but I'm including it just in case.
At some point after that, I woke the tablet with the power key and used my unlock pattern on the dots lock screen.
That's when I saw what I believe was mal-ware in action. The settings menus were scrolling and sub-menus being selected, all by themselves. I couldn't say exactly what was changed because whatever program or script that was running the process was going extremely fast.
When I realized it might be trying to send out data over my Wifi network, I turned off the Wifi router in my home.
I repeatedly held down the power key to turn the system off, but doing so only rebooted back to the useless lock screen which was not responding to anything. The normal method of holding the power button for a few seconds to bring up the menu and then tapping the "Power Off" option on that menu refused to power off the system. Nothing on that menu responded to touch.
Entering my pattern on the lock screen did absolutely nothing. I didn't even see any lines traced when I ran my finger over the screen.
At some point, I pulled out the external SD card. I have no idea if whatever hacked the tablet also put a copy of itself on the SD card.
I called a friend who looked up how to restore the tablet to factory settings. I didn't understand the directions exactly, so I ended up on a screen with a Warning!! about installing a Custom OS. (Holding down the Power + Volume Up seems to get me there)
I left it on this screen, and I turned my router back on and using my laptop, contacted Live Chat at Samsung but they didn't understand my problem. They told me to reboot the device and swipe my pattern several times and then after several failed attempts I would have the chance to use my Google credentials to get into it. But the device apparently never registered that my swipe attempts were failing.
So my device was booted up with me locked out, with the WiFi router on for a little while again. I turned off the router as soon as I realized that. That disconnected the chat session, but since Samsung chat wasn't helping me anyway, I didn't bother trying to go back.
I got the device back to the "Warning!!" screen. Then turned the router back on and searched for how to do a factory reset of the device. I found a video on YouTube and followed it.
I pressed the Volume Down and Power buttons simultaneously, followed by letting go of the power button. That brought up a menu which contained several options, including an option to do a factory reset. I used the volume buttons to highlight that and pressed Power key. A second screen came up and I used the volume buttons and power button to select "Yes" to confirm the reset.
It appeared to have done a factory reset, rebooting eventually.
However, after that, when I tried to tap on the touch screen to move forward through the selections, the touch screen was still unresponsive!
So I brought back the "Warning!!" screen and ran the battery down until the screen was blank and it wouldn't start when I held the power key.
Then I charged it for about 20 minutes and rebooted it. I think when it came back it was on the Recovery menu. I think I did a second factory reset, but not 100% sure. It eventually rebooted after a lot longer than usual.
When it came up, it was saying battery was low. I tried to tap the OK button, but nothing happened. Behind the battery window was the first setting screen to set up the device for the first time after a factory reset. (I think selecting USA?)
I brought back the "Warning!!" screen and left it on overnight so that the battery would run down.
That was about 8 hours ago. When I woke up, I used clear tape to keep the power button pressed down, to ensure that the battery will continue to run down.
____________________________________________
What do I do next? How do I get the touch screen to start working again? It is not a hardware problem, unless mal-ware can break the hardware. The touchscreen had been working fine until this happened.
Should I take the tablet back to Best Buy where I bought it at least a year (maybe 2 years) ago? I don't know if it's still under warranty.
I have over 20 year of experience as a software developer, but not for Android. I am not very experienced with doing anything to hardware.
Should I try to fix it myself?
I have never rooted any Android device and I'm not sure what that means, either.
I've never re-installed the ______ ? (rom? image? Odin?)
I read on this and/or other forums that there's a way to replace something, but the instructions were beyond my level of understanding. I would need the procedures to be broken down into steps which don't assume too much about what I know.
I understand how to download a file to Windows, given a URL for it. I understand what a zip file is and how to extract it. I understand how to press hardware buttons and plug in cables, and do these steps in the order I'm told.
I don't understand what I'd use to get the downloaded whatever-they-are onto the tablet to replace whatever-the-other-thing-is so that the touchscreen works again.
As far as I know, Odin is a Norse god.
The only firmware updates I've ever done are the ones that the device does on it's own through Samsung's updates.
I'd deeply appreciate getting this device back since I have extremely limited funds and probably won't be able to buy a replacement.
Thank you,
Linda
LMurphy said:
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Hacked, Touchscreen unresponsive
Hi! I need help with my tablet.
Device: Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 Tablet, model GT-P5113 TS. This model doesn't have a way to yank out the battery.
What's wrong: Touchscreen is not responding.
Current state: Attempting to drain the battery. Doesn't appear to be turned on. Factory reset apparently performed.
What happened: Sorry, this is long. It is as best as I can remember it. It may be somewhat inaccurate.
Yesterday evening, I was on my Windows laptop and logged into my Google account. I *thought* I used the Google Play Store to install Chrome to the tablet. (I had looked at the html5test website and it said Chrome had a higher HTML5 rating than the Dolphin/Jetpack browser I've been using on my tablet.)
But something went terribly wrong.
After sending Chrome to it, I unlocked the tablet and used both Chrome and Dolphin to go to html5test website. They both scored the same or nearly the same. I don't know if any of that is relevant, but I'm including it just in case.
At some point after that, I woke the tablet with the power key and used my unlock pattern on the dots lock screen.
That's when I saw what I believe was mal-ware in action. The settings menus were scrolling and sub-menus being selected, all by themselves. I couldn't say exactly what was changed because whatever program or script that was running the process was going extremely fast.
When I realized it might be trying to send out data over my Wifi network, I turned off the Wifi router in my home.
I repeatedly held down the power key to turn the system off, but doing so only rebooted back to the useless lock screen which was not responding to anything. The normal method of holding the power button for a few seconds to bring up the menu and then tapping the "Power Off" option on that menu refused to power off the system. Nothing on that menu responded to touch.
Entering my pattern on the lock screen did absolutely nothing. I didn't even see any lines traced when I ran my finger over the screen.
At some point, I pulled out the external SD card. I have no idea if whatever hacked the tablet also put a copy of itself on the SD card.
I called a friend who looked up how to restore the tablet to factory settings. I didn't understand the directions exactly, so I ended up on a screen with a Warning!! about installing a Custom OS. (Holding down the Power + Volume Up seems to get me there)
I left it on this screen, and I turned my router back on and using my laptop, contacted Live Chat at Samsung but they didn't understand my problem. They told me to reboot the device and swipe my pattern several times and then after several failed attempts I would have the chance to use my Google credentials to get into it. But the device apparently never registered that my swipe attempts were failing.
So my device was booted up with me locked out, with the WiFi router on for a little while again. I turned off the router as soon as I realized that. That disconnected the chat session, but since Samsung chat wasn't helping me anyway, I didn't bother trying to go back.
I got the device back to the "Warning!!" screen. Then turned the router back on and searched for how to do a factory reset of the device. I found a video on YouTube and followed it.
I pressed the Volume Down and Power buttons simultaneously, followed by letting go of the power button. That brought up a menu which contained several options, including an option to do a factory reset. I used the volume buttons to highlight that and pressed Power key. A second screen came up and I used the volume buttons and power button to select "Yes" to confirm the reset.
It appeared to have done a factory reset, rebooting eventually.
However, after that, when I tried to tap on the touch screen to move forward through the selections, the touch screen was still unresponsive!
So I brought back the "Warning!!" screen and ran the battery down until the screen was blank and it wouldn't start when I held the power key.
Then I charged it for about 20 minutes and rebooted it. I think when it came back it was on the Recovery menu. I think I did a second factory reset, but not 100% sure. It eventually rebooted after a lot longer than usual.
When it came up, it was saying battery was low. I tried to tap the OK button, but nothing happened. Behind the battery window was the first setting screen to set up the device for the first time after a factory reset. (I think selecting USA?)
I brought back the "Warning!!" screen and left it on overnight so that the battery would run down.
That was about 8 hours ago. When I woke up, I used clear tape to keep the power button pressed down, to ensure that the battery will continue to run down.
____________________________________________
What do I do next? How do I get the touch screen to start working again? It is not a hardware problem, unless mal-ware can break the hardware. The touchscreen had been working fine until this happened.
Should I take the tablet back to Best Buy where I bought it at least a year (maybe 2 years) ago? I don't know if it's still under warranty.
I have over 20 year of experience as a software developer, but not for Android. I am not very experienced with doing anything to hardware.
Should I try to fix it myself?
I have never rooted any Android device and I'm not sure what that means, either.
I've never re-installed the ______ ? (rom? image? Odin?)
I read on this and/or other forums that there's a way to replace something, but the instructions were beyond my level of understanding. I would need the procedures to be broken down into steps which don't assume too much about what I know.
I understand how to download a file to Windows, given a URL for it. I understand what a zip file is and how to extract it. I understand how to press hardware buttons and plug in cables, and do these steps in the order I'm told.
I don't understand what I'd use to get the downloaded whatever-they-are onto the tablet to replace whatever-the-other-thing-is so that the touchscreen works again.
As far as I know, Odin is a Norse god.
The only firmware updates I've ever done are the ones that the device does on it's own through Samsung's updates.
I'd deeply appreciate getting this device back since I have extremely limited funds and probably won't be able to buy a replacement.
Thank you,
Linda
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Definitely sounds like malware. You have two choices that I see, either root and custom rom or flash back to stock. Since you are stock you'd just be overwriting your existing install. Read this thread and decide your course of action http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2203309
Today I received a "new" Asus Zenpad 10 3s. Ordered from Amazon. I live in the US. When I turned it on, after a short delay, it went straight to a home screen. I could not navigate because the language was Indonesian and Talkback was on. It was loud and I was in my office. Volume had no effect. So I held down the power button to shut the thing off.
When I restarted, the normal 'start up' prompt came on like I would have expected (except that language was Indonesian and Talkbalk was on) . This made it difficult to navigate but eventually I was able to change the language and proceed.
Normally I wouldn't think twice of this except for the initial home screen situation. Although I wasn't able to navigate anywhere, I noticed that there were several apps installed (including Gmail) and that I hadn't yet set it up. I initially thought I had received a used tablet and that someone forgot to reset it. But when I hard rebooted, the fact that it came to the normal start up prompt concerned me. I didn't see the initial screen long but it appeared like a different home screen than the normal asus home screen.
So my question is: is there some way someone may have created some sort of back door dual boot or some other security hole? Is there a way to ensure my tablet is completely clean?
Note I tried to 'hard reset' it but it gave me an Android icon error message when I selected Recovery.
I am not planning on rooting etc. I just want a clean safe tablet to replace my Nexus 9.
Thanks.
xdatoast said:
Today I received a "new" Asus Zenpad 10 3s. Ordered from Amazon. I live in the US. When I turned it on, after a short delay, it went straight to a home screen. I could not navigate because the language was Indonesian and Talkback was on. It was loud and I was in my office. Volume had no effect. So I held down the power button to shut the thing off.
When I restarted, the normal 'start up' prompt came on like I would have expected (except that language was Indonesian and Talkbalk was on) . This made it difficult to navigate but eventually I was able to change the language and proceed.
Normally I wouldn't think twice of this except for the initial home screen situation. Although I wasn't able to navigate anywhere, I noticed that there were several apps installed (including Gmail) and that I hadn't yet set it up. I initially thought I had received a used tablet and that someone forgot to reset it. But when I hard rebooted, the fact that it came to the normal start up prompt concerned me. I didn't see the initial screen long but it appeared like a different home screen than the normal asus home screen.
So my question is: is there some way someone may have created some sort of back door dual boot or some other security hole? Is there a way to ensure my tablet is completely clean?
Note I tried to 'hard reset' it but it gave me an Android icon error message when I selected Recovery.
I am not planning on rooting etc. I just want a clean safe tablet to replace my Nexus 9.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's always the chance it could have been compromised. It's hard to know exactly what the screens are you mention without seeing them but my guess is that it is probably a grey import or indeed a returned item that has been resold to you or maybe it just wasn't set up properly by the factory. Could the "other" screen just have been it setting a high visibility option or something for people with a disability if it was also running talkback
What was the actual company that supplied it via Amazon?
You can scan it with a good anti virus app and also install a good no root firewall to see if it's trying to connect to suspect servers (though even this is not 100%)
Samsung Note 10, SM-970F
Magisk Rooted
Android 10, N970FXXS6DTK8
It's my GF's, and she uses a pattern unlock along with fingerprint. No new apps were installed or settings changed that she recalls.
Began as phone locking immediately after correct pattern was entered, but using fingerprint would unlock correctly.
With this immediate locking, the phone will by itself turn off the screen then turn it back on for two seconds as though the power button was pressed, then turns the screen off again.
When entering incorrect pattern, it says incorrect pattern and does nothing else.
She tried restarting the phone, which disabled the fingerprint unlock feature until the phone is successfully unlocked once.
Phone still locks immediately after entering correct pattern, and now she can't unlock it using fingerprint.
Now unable to unlock phone.
EDIT: If I repeatedly enter the correct pattern, after a random number of tries it will go to the 'starting phone' screen, but then will either restart by itself or sit there until I restart the phone. It really is random, once it took 7 tries, another time 20 tries. The phone doesn't show up on my windows PC as a mounted device during any of this.
USB debugging was not enabled, so I don't believe I can run any ADB commands. She didn't backup her phone and our focus is at least to get the photos off the camera, at which point doing a factory reset would be acceptable.
I've tried:
Entering a lot of bad patterns, trying to get to an option of unlocking with the google account associated with the phone, but the option never comes up.
Removing the phone case, only external item on the phone now is the stock screen protector.
Starting into recovery, clearing cache, repairing apps.
Starting into safe mode.
Booting in and out of root.
Letting the battery discharge completely to do a hard power cycle.
But no luck. The phone still locks immediately after entering the correct pattern. I haven't tried taking the phone's stock screen protector off, but will probably do that in case there is something wrong with the proximity sensor.
This is the international two SIM version of the Note 10, the only Note 10 variant which was rootable. I haven't worked on the phone for at least a year since it was rooted and setup.
SEU or a hardware failure. Either way when this happens your only option is to backdoor in. If it was a SEU after resetting you're good to go. If hardware it will likely reoccur... Even with a hardware failure many times nothing happens if no lock is set, you still have access. Setting a lock password introduces added failure modes.
SEU's are very rare but they do happen, randomly and just one bit of data is flipped. Interesting they cause no hardware damage. Higher altitudes elevate the risk as does exposure to man made high energy particles. That's one reason why spacecraft have 3 or more redundant computers. Apollo fights have logged half dozen or more SEU's per flight.
I never screen lock my N10+'s, double tap on/off. This is one reason why. Same with PC bios, no password is ever set. Once bitten, twice shy as the user is always the most likely person to get locked out... as I learned the hard way
@blackhawk, I hear you on getting burned with device security. And for any electronic device, secured or not, backups and redundancy are the only reliable difference between your device being useful and useless. It's been hard not to say any 'I told you so' about this, since I was telling her both to use a pin instead of pattern and to let me setup a regular backup. I don't know that a pin would have been different, but I think it would have since the fingerprint was working before the restart.
Do you have any resources you could point me to on how to backdoor into an android with a password/encryption? I know you can unlock a device using ADB, but I believe you need USB debugging enabled first and I don't know how to make that happen without first unlocking the phone.
mc_squirrel said:
@blackhawk, I hear you on getting burned with device security. And for any electronic device, secured or not, backups and redundancy are the only reliable difference between your device being useful and useless. It's been hard not to say any 'I told you so' about this, since I was telling her both to use a pin instead of pattern and to let me setup a regular backup. I don't know that a pin would have been different, but I think it would have since the fingerprint was working before the restart.
Do you have any resources you could point me to on how to backdoor into an android with a password/encryption? I know you can unlock a device using ADB, but I believe you need USB debugging enabled first and I don't know how to make that happen without first unlocking the phone.
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Samsung repair can do it. A local shop or yourself, maybe. If there's an associated Samsung or Google account, start there. I never had to do that but the information isn't hard to find. The data will likely be lost though.
Meh, it's a very rude surprise.