[Recovery] Alphanumeric password not accepted

Bug Reports
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#1

REPRODUCIBILITY: 100% (always)
OSVERSION: 4.5.0.18, flashed
HARDWARE: Sony Xperia XA2 - Dual SIM - h4113 - h4113 - 1.0.0.12 - armv7hl
UI LANGUAGE: English (UK) (user: en_GB, os: en_GB.utf8)
REGRESSION: not specified

DESCRIPTION:

The new alphanumeric password is not yet really usable as it is not accepted in hybris-recovery, I’d say.

I had the “Ahoj boot loop syndrom”.
No way to recover my data as I could not enter recovery mode. (no probs tho, as I had a good backup)

PRECONDITIONS:

Having an alphanumeric password set

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:

  1. Set an alphanumeric password
  2. Try to enter recovery mode with fastboot

EXPECTED RESULTS:

Password accepted,
Enter in the phone’s recovery shell

ACTUAL RESULTS:

Password refused

MODIFICATIONS:

  • Patchmanager: yes
  • OpenRepos: yes
  • Chum: yes
  • Other: none specified

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

I tried with e.g ‘bbbbb’ password. Even that simple is not working whereas ‘12345’ is working.
edit:
My error somewhere. things like ‘bbbbb’ are working in recovery.
But other passphrases with numbers and some special signs are not.

Device Owner User: defaultuser + secondary user, same password
Home Encryption: enabled

the initial version of this bug report was created using Bugger 0.9.9+git3
1 Like
Community meeting on IRC 30th March 2023
#2

Have anyone else seen this problem? At least I couldn’t reproduce this with X10 III.

#4

I flashed another XA2.
My mistake/typo by testing on simple alpha passwords. They are working in recovery too.

But a more complex passphrase with a number and a special sign is not working in recovery whereas it is working to unlock the phone/partition in normal conditions.
E.g.:
“A b:1” (without quotes)

2 Likes
#5

Btw, it is really great to have now a secure way to encrypt our data.
Thanks!

1 Like
#6

Added to internal tracker

2 Likes
#7

Is it possible that the recovery always assumes an en-US keyboard so the wrong characters are sent from an e.g. German one?

3 Likes
#8

Thank you for the idea, @nephros
Alas, unfortunately no.
I tried with the english-US keyboard enabled, finding and hitting the correct keys to make the “A b:1” test code. But no.
Bug still of actuality.

#9

My first guess is that the space character is not accepted at the gate of the recovery mode.
Namely, while “ A b:1 ” fails (XA2 with 4.5.0.24), the code “ Ab:123 ” lets me through.

The valid characters for the security code (in normal phone functions) are listed here:

It seems that we should add a remark for the space character (if fixing the code checker happens to be hard).

Also the security code “ ,.!?;:&%#()=+- ” is valid, i.e., all the special characters on the 3rd row (but not ‘space’) of the valid characters in that document ^.

Please note: the asterisk (*) does not belong to the valid characters.

2 Likes
#10

Excellent! I’ll change that. Many thanks!