Maybe I am just missing something very obvious but it seems like there is no option to wipe the phone after misentering the password multiple times (BB or iphone style)?
I know it can be done with Exchange policies but it will be a cold day in hell before I go THAT route...
nupi said:
Maybe I am just missing something very obvious but it seems like there is no option to wipe the phone after misentering the password multiple times (BB or iphone style)?
I know it can be done with Exchange policies but it will be a cold day in hell before I go THAT route...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not a standard option in Android (I for one am glad - I've accidentally wiped my work Blackberry more than once when inebriated). Android Device Manager (or the Motorola equivalent) both allow a manual remote wipe from a PC or another Android Device.
It's possible for apps to monitor incorrect password entries (no root required just a Device Administrator Permission), although I'm not sure if an automated wipe is possible without root. Take a look around the play store to see if anything meets your needs.
I use the automation app MacroDroid along with Secure Settings (both in the playstore) on my unrooted MotoG. The way I've got it set up is that 3 failures to enter correct PIN changes it to Password mode, a further 3 failures will prevent the phone from waking up (by automating a screen lock associated with the screen coming on). As-well as that it will automatically take and email to me front and rear camera photos, and the phones location on the change from Pin to Password, and again on the change to 'Lockdown' mode. I can send it an SMS with a special message in the text to get it to repeat this. I'm toying with the idea of setting it to shout 'Thief!' repeatedly at full volume when someone tries to turn on the screen when it's locked down
It is not exactly that what you were asking for. But i just wanted to mention also Cerberus here.
It brings a lot of nice features to control your phone remote.
Hey guys
I flashed the factory images last night effectively wiping my Nexus 5 and starting from scratch. I did not restore apps and settings either. After I manually installed a bunch of my apps back and changed around a few settings, I decided to enable encryption. However, I don't think it enabled properly.
First, I had not set a PIN lock on my phone yet at the time.
When I decided to enable encryption and go through the process, it didn't ask me to enter a PIN.
It seemingly completed encrypting the phone. When I go back to the security menu, it says "Encrypted".
However, I am not prompted to enter a PIN upon booting the phone (not talking about the lock screen PIN).
So, it seems like it didn't work but I'm not sure. Has anyone else enabled encryption yet?
and yes, I saw the performance degradation that comes with enabling encryption but I'd rather have the security.
definitely sounds like there's an issue there. Do you have a custom recovery? If so, you could boot into that, pull some data and see if it opens. If it does, yeah its not encrypted.
Not worth mentioning degradation. All encryption always has and always will have performance degradation. It's par for the course
That sounds like a good idea. If it's not encrypted, then I guess the only method is to wipe and reinstall again.
mattkroeder said:
That sounds like a good idea. If it's not encrypted, then I guess the only method is to wipe and reinstall again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think so. You can't reverse the encryption flag without a wipe I dont think
mattkroeder said:
Hey guys
I flashed the factory images last night effectively wiping my Nexus 5 and starting from scratch. I did not restore apps and settings either. After I manually installed a bunch of my apps back and changed around a few settings, I decided to enable encryption. However, I don't think it enabled properly.
First, I had not set a PIN lock on my phone yet at the time.
When I decided to enable encryption and go through the process, it didn't ask me to enter a PIN.
It seemingly completed encrypting the phone. When I go back to the security menu, it says "Encrypted".
However, I am not prompted to enter a PIN upon booting the phone (not talking about the lock screen PIN).
So, it seems like it didn't work but I'm not sure. Has anyone else enabled encryption yet?
and yes, I saw the performance degradation that comes with enabling encryption but I'd rather have the security.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure, but i think it's designed to works just like that, the encryption key is not the PIN anymore but something (random?) that is stored somewhere on the phone.
that would protect the data in case someone tries to read it directly from the phone's memory, but useless if you don;t have a PIN/PASSWORD.
I avoided encryption before for exactly that reason (requiring a password to boot). If I lose the phone I want the person that found/stole it to be able to at least boot it. if the person is not a thief there's a contact number so they can call me to give it back. if he/she's a thief well, as long as it's on I can call it, track it, wipe it. even brick it.
by not being able to boot it, the chances of getting it back are 0 if the battery dies or is dead!
http://readwrite.com/2014/10/28/google-android-lollipop-encryption-issues
there isn't much info out there about it.
kenshin33 said:
Not sure, but i think it's designed to works just like that, the encryption key is not the PIN anymore but something (random?) that is stored somewhere on the phone.
that would protect the data in case someone tries to read it directly from the phone's memory, but useless if you don;t have a PIN/PASSWORD.
I avoided encryption before for exactly that reason (requiring a password to boot). If I lose the phone I want the person that found/stole it to be able to at least boot it. if the person is not a thief there's a contact number so they can call me to give it back. if he/she's a thief well, as long as it's on I can call it, track it, wipe it. even brick it.
by not being able to boot it, the chances of getting it back are 0 if the battery dies or is dead!
http://readwrite.com/2014/10/28/google-android-lollipop-encryption-issues
there isn't much info out there about it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I went ahead and wiped the phone again. I reinstalled lollipop and made sure to enable a lockscreen PIN before I enabled encryption. It seems to have encrypted properly. It prompts me for my PIN at boot up now.
You make a good point about encryption making it more difficult for someone to get a hold of me if I lose the phone though.
Same problem here, with Nexus 5 and Android v5
My work Exchange server enforces a security policy to the phone which forces you to enable encryption. So I went ahead and did that, and the email app is still saying that encryption needs to be enabled. When I reboot the phone I never get prompted for a PIN to decrypt the device, yet in the settings screen it says it is encrypted.
I'm going to have to re-flash. Is it possible the issue is caused by leaving the bootloader unlocked? or is this is a bug?
EDIT: Update. Reflashed, but first thing I did was relock the bootloader and enable a security screenlock PIN, *then* encrypted the phone. Now it's prompting me for a PIN on boot and looks like it's worked. Hope the Exchange email policy stays happy this time, as it worked before for about a day before it complained about the lack of encryption
this worked for me also
I did what was stated below and it worked....
1. reflashed,
2. locked bootloader
3. created lock pin
4. encrypted, THEN
5. added MDM control (MAAS360) and exchange email.
It seems to work OK now.
Thanks!
JoyrexJ9 said:
Same problem here, with Nexus 5 and Android v5
My work Exchange server enforces a security policy to the phone which forces you to enable encryption. So I went ahead and did that, and the email app is still saying that encryption needs to be enabled. When I reboot the phone I never get prompted for a PIN to decrypt the device, yet in the settings screen it says it is encrypted.
I'm going to have to re-flash. Is it possible the issue is caused by leaving the bootloader unlocked? or is this is a bug?
EDIT: Update. Reflashed, but first thing I did was relock the bootloader and enable a security screenlock PIN, *then* encrypted the phone. Now it's prompting me for a PIN on boot and looks like it's worked. Hope the Exchange email policy stays happy this time, as it worked before for about a day before it complained about the lack of encryption
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
mattkroeder said:
Hey guys
I flashed the factory images last night effectively wiping my Nexus 5 and starting from scratch. I did not restore apps and settings either. After I manually installed a bunch of my apps back and changed around a few settings, I decided to enable encryption. However, I don't think it enabled properly.
First, I had not set a PIN lock on my phone yet at the time.
When I decided to enable encryption and go through the process, it didn't ask me to enter a PIN.
It seemingly completed encrypting the phone. When I go back to the security menu, it says "Encrypted".
However, I am not prompted to enter a PIN upon booting the phone (not talking about the lock screen PIN).
So, it seems like it didn't work but I'm not sure. Has anyone else enabled encryption yet?
and yes, I saw the performance degradation that comes with enabling encryption but I'd rather have the security.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you set up a screen lock pin the phone will ask you then if you would like the PIN to be enabled or not at boot.
kenshin33 said:
Not sure, but i think it's designed to works just like that, the encryption key is not the PIN anymore but something (random?) that is stored somewhere on the phone.
that would protect the data in case someone tries to read it directly from the phone's memory, but useless if you don;t have a PIN/PASSWORD.
I avoided encryption before for exactly that reason (requiring a password to boot). If I lose the phone I want the person that found/stole it to be able to at least boot it. if the person is not a thief there's a contact number so they can call me to give it back. if he/she's a thief well, as long as it's on I can call it, track it, wipe it. even brick it.
by not being able to boot it, the chances of getting it back are 0 if the battery dies or is dead!
http://readwrite.com/2014/10/28/google-android-lollipop-encryption-issues
there isn't much info out there about it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry for OT, but how can you remotely brick your phone? Just curious in case I ever need to. Don't live in the best of neighborhoods. I can remote wipe, track, take pics. The normal lost/stolen stuff, but I haven't heard of remotely bricking a phone ever.
Nexus 5 still looking to be encrypted
Only a temp fix---Both my Nexus 7, and Nexus 5 just started asked to be encrypted again....
This is still a problem with Lollipop
thegasmaster said:
I did what was stated below and it worked....
1. reflashed,
2. locked bootloader
3. created lock pin
4. encrypted, THEN
5. added MDM control (MAAS360) and exchange email.
It seems to work OK now.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
wipe efs partition (I do have a backup on my computer) and the phone is no longer a phone.
Just to be clear, you can enable encryption on Android 5.0, and it will not force you to lock the phone. (Like the PIN screen and boot lock). When you buy a Nexus 6/9 the data partition is encrypted but there's no lock set. The following is from this article;
First, the encryption doesn't help much if you haven't set a passcode. Ludwig said studies have shown that roughly have of users don't set passcodes on their devices, largely because they find it inconvenient to keep entering them dozens of times a day. Lollipop will still encrypt your data, but it will also automatically decrypt it in normal use. So if you don't have a passcode, much of your information will be available to anyone who picks up your phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So if you've enabled encryption, and gone through the process, you're phone data partition is encrypted. It's just not locked down until you use some kind of phone lock too. BTW, the article goes on to describe the limited usefulness of having an encrypted data partition and no phone lock;
Lollipop's encryption still offers some limited protection even under those circumstances—for instance, by protecting stored data against anyone who tries to read it directly from the phone's memory. That could shield user passwords and other sensitive data from attackers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As to why Exchange policies don't see the phone as encrypted is probably due to another issue.
Setting PIN to be required at startup after encryption possible fix
I now have my Nexus 5 & 7 working with exchange on Lollipop using this-
1. Reflashed Lollipop
2. Let phone reinstall all my apps
3. Locked bootloader.
4. Set a screen lock PIN
5. Encrypt phone
6. Set screen lock PIN to be required on start up (this was missing before!)
7. Installed MDM control via Mass360-all policies look to be met, including encryption
8. Installed my exchange account via Gmail
//code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=79342
Updated thread with solution
---
* It used to be that when I did a reboot or shutdown and restart, I would have to enter a password before the system fully started.
* But now the phone boots into the phone without putting in my password. I can reboot the phone and it will boot all the way to the Lock screen, and I can unlock the lock screen with my fingerprint or my backup password.
* I am concerned that somehow my device is either no longer encrypted or that there is some setting which has stored the boot password.
--
Solution :
For those of you who find they have this problem and have not solved it, I found a solution that works, related to a bug (feature?) in Accessibility.
Apologies if this was suggested further in the thread, and that I'm replying to an old post. But I recently had this problem and figured out a solution.
- Accessibility was enabled and for some reason this cached the boot password. So- when I removed the app (rights) and turned off accessibility, and changed (reset/reentered) the password in security settings... On next boot the phone correctly asked me for password.
YMMV.
subs said:
I posted this elsewhere... But I'm having the same problem. Any thoughts? I can post more details, but don't want to repost this everywhere that I see people having the same unresolved problem.
---
* It used to be that when I did a reboot or shutdown and restart, I would have to enter a password before the system fully started.
* But now the phone boots into the phone without putting in my password. I can reboot the phone and it will boot all the way to the Lock screen, and I can unlock the lock screen with my fingerprint or my backup password.
* I am concerned that somehow my device is either no longer encrypted or that there is some setting which has stored the boot password.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, please try not to bump threads almost a year old. I realise that it might have taken you a while to actually reach this thread, but hear me out.
Opening a new thread is always better, since software versions, features and devices are most likely different, along with different device usage habits/users.
You say you're having "the same problem"... as.. who exactly? There's a bunch of different specific "issues" that relate to encryption. Be specific.
For instance, you mentioning fingerprint sensor leads me to presume that you are not using a Nexus 5.
Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk
Hi,
Yesterday I set a fingerprint lock on my S7. It prompted me to enter a backup password and some other password, both with different requirements (one only had to be 4 letters, one was longer and had a number) and the longer one had to be confirmed whereas the shorter one did not. I set this up and tested it a few times, everything seemed to work great. Later I let my phone idle and it turned the screen off on its own for the first time, ever since then the phone has not been able to recognize my fingerprint. It doesn't even say "No match", it just acts like I'm not even putting a finger on it at all.
Tried over and over and eventually tried the backup password, which for some reason is the shorter one without a number. I put in what I am absolutely sure I put in, and it wouldn't take it. Tried a couple more times, even got so desperate as to emulate potential typing errors I might have made (since no confirmation for that password) and nothing worked.
Eventually I hit the timed lockout and I had to stop trying things then. So I went online and searched and discovered Google's Android Device Manager. I heard that if you lock the phone with it you can unlock it through the same manager and the phone will be unlocked. First thing that was odd was that ADM didn't give me an option to enter a password, just a contact message and phone number. I still put in a message and hit lock, and... nothing changed on ADM at all.
Now my phone shows the stupid message every time I wake it up and every few seconds on the lock screen (I can still attempt to unlock the phone with the password and use phone/camera though), but ADM doesn't even give an option to unlock, just change the locked message. I can't even get rid of the damn lock by changing it to blank. I heard Samsung offers a similar service but I never made a Samsung account and apparently one is required to use it.
Beyond that the only solution I've found is wiping the phone (which I can easily do, because there's an option in ADM for it which presumably works), which I really don't want to do since I have a lot of pictures and data on the phone that aren't backed up that I would absolutely hate to lose.
To make things worse it appears that this issue is specific to my phone/the S7/Samsung phones/something, as I have my old Nexus 4 listed in ADM as well and going through the options for it I see it has the ability to define a password, but no such thing for the S7. I really have no clue where to go from here, tons of googling hasn't found me any method I haven't already tried or can't do.
I'd be so grateful if someone here would at the very least find a way for me to recover data before wiping it to get rid of the lock.
There are many sites selling Mix 3's some Chinese, some Global, some with locked bootloaders, and some with unlocked bootloaders, this thread is to help people "protect" the devices they have bought (or will buy).
It's through my understanding that the most "secure" way of protecting your phone & data from thief's is to have your bootloader locked, with no custom recovery, encryption on & usb debugging disabled right?
This is because with a unlocked bootloader, the thief has the ability to boot into TWRP (for example) & simply wipe your pin/password/lock off the phone completely, then just boot it up, factory reset it & sell it.
I know there is methods such as putting the phone in cold temperatures so you can retrieve the encryption keys from the RAM, but assuming the thief is just basic & what's to make some quick money off your phone...So...
What's the best way & most recommended thing to do with Xiaomi devices specifically, locked/unlocked, encrypted/not-encrypted, does it matter?, If not, why not?
Any help is appreciated! The more in-depth the better.
Even with a locked bootloader a thief can hold VolUp while booting, wipe phone and sell it. Wiping is possible in any case and thats not even the issue a stolen Phone is gone.
The issue are your data which can be stolen too when you have a unlocked bootloader. Simply boot to twrp connect usb and copy everything. But you can prevent that with encryption and enable "requires pattern to start". That way if your phone gets stolen the thief can still Install/use Twrp but he needs to enter a pattern to decrypt the storage. If he doesnt, twrp wont be able to read the partition and your data is safe. He can still wipe the Phone and sell it but you cant prevent that. I don't know if the pattern generates the encryption keys or retrieves them from somewhere but i'd assume it generates them, probably together with some device specific values, else that would be a flaw in my book. If someone could enlighten me here that'd be nice.
If your bootloader is locked he also can't access your data. Since stock recovers doesn't allow/support Usb-filetransfer. So a lockpattern is all you need there. Encryption shouldnt really matter against the normal thief.
I am going this way: Unlocked bootloader to get rid of Miui, Twrp to have a proper recovery menu, and encryption+pattern to save my data. Disable USB-Developer Options to prevent adb shenanigans.
But on the hand if you wan't to get really panariod a locked bootloader would be better since you still can read the system image from the phone from twrp, this means, and this is a easy way to do it, you could read it copy it to the pc and simply brutefroce the lockpattern. If you have the partitions you can simply try 3 patterns either it works or the phone locks itself up because you did 3 wrong. If it locks up you simply write the partitions back and try again. If you can do 3 in 30 seconds you are done in 45 days since there are only 390.000 different patterns on a 3x3 grid (which is what most people use since some Roms don't even allow for 4x4 or 5x5) but if you emulate it and can do 3 in 15 seconds you are down to 23 days. If you run it in 20 emulators you are done in 1 day. (That would be an awesome weekend project.) In emulation you could really optimize this since you can cut everything out what isn't needed for the attempt to encrypt the partition. you dont even need the screen to load, simply send the decryption module whatever the last module in the Numbers-from-touches-chain would have sent, everything that is loaded before the attempt to decrypt must be unencrypted therefore can be messed with, probably it's even universal across phones since that's a stock android thing. If it tries to write used attempts, save whatever what gets overwritten beforehand, let it write its thing, kill the process, revert changes and try again with the next set. Maybe you get it down to 3s or 4s for 3 attempts and boom you are at 6 hours to encrypt any android phone, no matter which version, with an unlocked bootloader which uses a 3x3 pattern. But your data would be really valueable to someone if they did this. You can't do that with a locked bootloader since you can't read the partitions or you could just use the 5x5 pattern, which you cant do on MIUI (i just tried and havent found where you could change it). But probably i have a giant oversight in there so this probably woudn't work
________________________________________________
On the other hand if you want to recover your phone you should make it as easy as possible to get the thief into your phone since you dont want them to run it off and wipe it. I DONT RECOMMEND THIS. But you could make a 2nd user who has no lock pattern on it. Concider your Data public at this point but while they are busy looking at your selfies you could use a app like prey to track the phone. But since Data are more important than a phone i'd never do or recommend that.
Or you could just buy a tin foil hat.
~phoeny~ said:
Even with a locked bootloader a thief can hold VolUp while booting, wipe phone and sell it. Wiping is possible in any case and thats not even the issue a stolen Phone is gone.
The issue are your data which can be stolen too when you have a unlocked bootloader. Simply boot to twrp connect usb and copy everything. But you can prevent that with encryption and enable "requires pattern to start". That way if your phone gets stolen the thief can still Install/use Twrp but he needs to enter a pattern to decrypt the storage. If he doesnt, twrp wont be able to read the partition and your data is safe. He can still wipe the Phone and sell it but you cant prevent that. I don't know if the pattern generates the encryption keys or retrieves them from somewhere but i'd assume it generates them, probably together with some device specific values, else that would be a flaw in my book. If someone could enlighten me here that'd be nice.
If your bootloader is locked he also can't access your data. Since stock recovers doesn't allow/support Usb-filetransfer. So a lockpattern is all you need there. Encryption shouldnt really matter against the normal thief.
I am going this way: Unlocked bootloader to get rid of Miui, Twrp to have a proper recovery menu, and encryption+pattern to save my data. Disable USB-Developer Options to prevent adb shenanigans.
But on the hand if you wan't to get really panariod a locked bootloader would be better since you still can read the system image from the phone from twrp, this means, and this is a easy way to do it, you could read it copy it to the pc and simply brutefroce the lockpattern. If you have the partitions you can simply try 3 patterns either it works or the phone locks itself up because you did 3 wrong. If it locks up you simply write the partitions back and try again. If you can do 3 in 30 seconds you are done in 45 days since there are only 390.000 different patterns on a 3x3 grid (which is what most people use since some Roms don't even allow for 4x4 or 5x5) but if you emulate it and can do 3 in 15 seconds you are down to 23 days. If you run it in 20 emulators you are done in 1 day. (That would be an awesome weekend project.) In emulation you could really optimize this since you can cut everything out what isn't needed for the attempt to encrypt the partition. you dont even need the screen to load, simply send the decryption module whatever the last module in the Numbers-from-touches-chain would have sent, everything that is loaded before the attempt to decrypt must be unencrypted therefore can be messed with, probably it's even universal across phones since that's a stock android thing. If it tries to write used attempts, save whatever what gets overwritten beforehand, let it write its thing, kill the process, revert changes and try again with the next set. Maybe you get it down to 3s or 4s for 3 attempts and boom you are at 6 hours to encrypt any android phone, no matter which version, with an unlocked bootloader which uses a 3x3 pattern. But your data would be really valueable to someone if they did this. You can't do that with a locked bootloader since you can't read the partitions or you could just use the 5x5 pattern, which you cant do on MIUI (i just tried and havent found where you could change it). But probably i have a giant oversight in there so this probably woudn't work
________________________________________________
On the other hand if you want to recover your phone you should make it as easy as possible to get the thief into your phone since you dont want them to run it off and wipe it. I DONT RECOMMEND THIS. But you could make a 2nd user who has no lock pattern on it. Concider your Data public at this point but while they are busy looking at your selfies you could use a app like prey to track the phone. But since Data are more important than a phone i'd never do or recommend that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really appreciate the time you took to type out this post, thankyou.
Hi all,
Some expert advice please. My technophobe wife’s S7 Edge has suddenly decided to ignore her PIN, which has never been changed.
Phone isn’t registered with Samsung.
Google Device Manager no longer provides the remote unlock feature (swines!)
Against my better judgement, I tried Wondershare’s Drfone tool, but it doesn’t support the S7 so the only option it provides is “wipe device to remove PIN”. (Very bloody useful).
I’ve installed ADB Tools on my PC, but can’t do anything serious without USB debug enabled on the phone. It isn’t.
I’d hoped to be able to enable that through recovery mode. No go.
Obviously the phone is on stock firmware so there are no fancy tools installed.
Is there ANYTHING else I can try to bypass the amnesiac Lock Screen, or at least get onto the damn thing remotely to recover 4+ years of notes, contacts, etc?
TIA.
Password/hardware failures happen; been locked out of bios when it failed. Had no password been set there been no problem.
Rule #1 avoid password lockouts as you are the most likely one to get locked out!
Rule #2 or maybe #1, always have at least 2 hdd backups that are location/electronically isolated.
An earth grounded conductive box (Farraday cage) is preferable to protect from near close lightning strikes*, strong magnetic fields and EMPs
If no backup exist you may have just learned two things I and many others have learned the hard way. Yes, well...
Try a hard reboot (not reset!)
Try clearing the system cache, doubt either will get it but worth a shot.
If ADB is enabled on the device more options maybe available.
A data recovery expert may be able to recover the data.
Hopefully you can recover it but better protect your ass...ets in the future.
Start today with all your devices.
*they happen randomly and can completely wipe and/or destroy a unshielded drive, even many yards away.