Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder2.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Java Jive <java@evij.com.invalid>
Newsgroups: alt.comp.os.windows-10,comp.mobile.android
Subject: Re: Extracting WiFi Passwords - SOLVED AT LAST!
Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2024 01:15:55 +0000
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 61
Message-ID: <vgmd4c$3eclt$1@dont-email.me>
References: <1ktfijp2bp4fisefbf95ptanhve79ab2od@4ax.com>
 <vg8ufv$hoo4$1@dont-email.me> <8b3gij5v1lhafk4bqa3f3iquuns3gnbskt@4ax.com>
 <vg9cpt$oua4$1@dont-email.me> <lor6jbFd6ktU1@mid.individual.net>
 <vgamqi$ujq$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
 <vgaqga$10q2u$1@dont-email.me>
 <vgb223$746$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
 <vgb7lh$1idh$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
 <vgctte$1g9ct$1@dont-email.me>
 <vgdq8h$17dm$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
 <vgg82t$2732h$1@dont-email.me>
 <vggekq$1ksn$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
 <vggkqn$295tf$1@dont-email.me>
 <vgglhr$2utg$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
 <vgirqm$2o2ft$1@dont-email.me>
 <vgitog$1ch3$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
 <vgm951$3dr8g$1@dont-email.me> <vgmc8i$3e9fd$1@dont-email.me>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Injection-Date: Sat, 09 Nov 2024 02:15:57 +0100 (CET)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="12f963d0f169405037c76b01b337574f";
	logging-data="3617469"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/CWz2fshhV0LqdEnmuZZ5XftGjnayEA9M="
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird
Cancel-Lock: sha1:AlJ5wOT1oLgmG4zQL74s6rRbLLw=
Content-Language: en-GB
In-Reply-To: <vgmc8i$3e9fd$1@dont-email.me>
Bytes: 4175

On 2024-11-09 01:01, Java Jive wrote:
> On 2024-11-09 00:08, Java Jive wrote:
>>
>> There is a command ...
>>    <path>\adb backup
>> ... which creates a backup of the phone or tablet on your computer. 
>> However, the backup so created, called backup.ab, is a unique tar file 
>> format that almost nothing else can read as is, though there are neat 
>> workarounds as long as it is not encrypted; however, because my tablet 
>> is encrypted, so is the backup, which means that the simple 
>> workarounds don't work.
>>
>> A whole Perl upgrade later, where the biggest problem was actually 
>> uninstalling the previous version, to run a Perl script to extract the 
>> contents resulted only in a message that it couldn't do anything with 
>> this version 4, a version later than that for which it was written.
>>
>> A whole Java upgrade later, where again the biggest problem was 
>> uninstalling the previous JDK and JRE, finally extracted it, but it 
>> seems to contain nothing useful that was not available already simply 
>> by connecting the phone to the PC in the normal way.
> 
> Actually they were there all along, which shows just how useless is 
> Windows Search, by contrast Textpad's Find in Files option found them.
> 
> So, the full procedure is:
> 
> 1.    <path>\adb backup
> 
> ... creates backup.ab in the current directory
> 
> 2.    Install or update to the latest Java Runtime Environment, 
> currently 1.8.0_431:
> 
> https://www.java.com/en/download/help/download_options.html
> 
> 3.    Download Nelenkov's abe*.jar file:
> 
> https://github.com/nelenkov/android-backup-extractor
> https://github.com/nelenkov/android-backup-extractor/releases/download/latest/abe-3e9a273.jar
> 
> Give the command (without the square brackets around the password, they 
> are merely a convention signifying that it is an optional parameter):
> 
> java -jar <path>\abe-3e9a273.jar unpack <path>\backup.ab 
> <path>\backup.tar [password]
> 
> The resulting tar file can be extracted by 7-zip.  Search the extracted 
> files' contents for an SSID known to be on the device, mine were in:
> 
> \apps\com.android.providers.settings\d_f\flattened-data

Should have added my thanks to all those who have helped along the way.

-- 

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website: 
www.macfh.co.uk