Enroll a Fully Managed non-GMS Android device using ADB

When dealing with non-GMS Android devices (specialized rugged devices, devices in China) one big challenge is actually enrolling them, since the code that enrolls a Fully Managed device is not part of AOSP. As I mentioned in my post about China, only a few vendors took care of this. In this post we you will...

Setting a package as Device Administrator with StageNow, reversing the DevAdmin class name

I had to perform a simple task recently: set up the Battery Swap application on out TC51 as a Device Administrator, so that it can do its battery swapping preparations correctly (for some reason it's not set up as such by default). MX and StageNow allow this via the DevMgr CSP. But that CSP requires...

Calling Android Settings pages programmatically during Staging

In quite a few situations we need the user to input specific data during device Staging. For instance, I have been doing a job for a customer, requiring a PIN code pre-set on the device, when it comes back from repairs. This PIN code can only be set programmatically by Device Administrator class app (or...

Should I attempt to uninstall Android bloatware? Android storage explained (or part of it)

There is a significant number of posts on the internet regarding how people hate bloatware that comes bundled with their devices, how it eats at their precious internal storage space and how they would want to uninstall it (which is impossible w/o rooting your device). While I agree with one’s right to hate the bloatware,...

Bypassing Android security via backups (PSK recovery)

In my recent Android trainings and the Android security talk I gave at AppForum 2014 I was asked to provide a sort of a demo that can be easily replicated to explain the importance of maintaining a proper security posture. So I created a script that 'recovers' PSKs from the device and displays them. Before...