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Ok, maybe I'm in the wrong place. But here goes.
My phone is trying to send text to paid numbers behind my back. I'm using prepaid so it doesn't work. I get a "You have insufficient funds to send this text" message daily, at random times.
I have no pirated apps. Everything on my phone came straight from the market. However, I've not installed a single one of the apps that was on the recent list all over tech sites.
I'm planning on reflashing with a different rom and changing all the passwords that were stored on my phone.
BUT.
Before I do this, I want to find out which app is causing this behavior. Any Ideas on how to find out what is sending random text from my phone (they don't show up in the messaging app)
viogrep said:
Ok, maybe I'm in the wrong place. But here goes.
My phone is trying to send text to paid numbers behind my back. I'm using prepaid so it doesn't work. I get a "You have insufficient funds to send this text" message daily, at random times.
I have no pirated apps. Everything on my phone came straight from the market. However, I've not installed a single one of the apps that was on the recent list all over tech sites.
I'm planning on reflashing with a different rom and changing all the passwords that were stored on my phone.
BUT.
Before I do this, I want to find out which app is causing this behavior. Any Ideas on how to find out what is sending random text from my phone (they don't show up in the messaging app)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Install a android antivirus and firewall like Lookout.
Sent from my GingerBread Eris using XDA App
lookout finds nothing. All the other AV software fails to install. "Unknown error -18"
i have plenty of free space.
viogrep,
I wrote a novel, but then thought I should just ask a few preliminary questions:
Q1) does the error message contain any useful "hints", such as the destination number ?
Q2) if you use a logcat - capturing app, does anything show up in the logcat right around the time the message is generated which might provide some further clues?
There's a lot of different techniques you can use, but they require a bit of effort - not only to perform, but to explain, too.
Q3) Are you willing to post up the output of the "ps" command to a pastebin?
Q4) What apps on your phone request "SEND_SMS" privileges? You can find out with
Code:
strings /data/system/packages.xml > /sdcard/strings-pkgs-xml.txt
and then poking through the "strings-pkgs-xml.txt" file. When you see (for instance)
name="android.permission.SEND_SMS"
the immediately prior package is what requested it. Either that or you can do something tricky like
Code:
strings /data/system/packages.xml | awk '/<package name/{pkg=$2;}; /_SMS/{print pkg, $2;}'
bftb0
1. No destination number in the error. Sorry.
2. Also, no clues in logcat from what I've seen.
3. PS > http://pastebin.com/iUAfP9Yb
4. Besides the default gapps, the only other app with SEND_SMS priv. is Koxx Pure Messenger. (Purchased from the market, Have had for awhile, the sms sending is new)
Going to try to call my provider and see if I can get the number that's been denied because of funds.
*edit* No luck with provider.
I'd really like to know whats doing it so I don't install the same app once I flash. Luckily I keep nothing important on my phone. Its gmail account is actually a duplicate with my original forwarding to it. I'm a tiny bit overprotective over my email(address). :x
viogrep said:
4. Besides the default gapps, the only other app with SEND_SMS priv. is Koxx Pure Messenger. (Purchased from the market, Have had for awhile, the sms sending is new)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know that it isn't necessarily this simple, but if that really is the only other app besides the GAPPs with SMS priveledges, especially coupled with the knowledge that the SMS capability is new, I think you have your answer.
If you tried a new ROM and restored all but that one app, and the problem never happens again then you can be 95% sure. Only way to be 100% sure is that after a certain length of time without a problem (a week?) you reinstall Koxx and then if the problem starts happening again.
I looked through your "ps" listing.
Didn't see anything too obvious sticking out at me; there were a couple of non-market apps running though. I know that there is no theoretical reason why non-market apps would be malicious - on the other hand, I sort of wonder why they are not on the market... you know what I mean? What is stopping them? (In the case of Tubemate - which was actually kicked off of Google's market, my suspicions are even higher. I realize it was not kicked off because of malware; but still...)
These were the only processes that were either not on my phone, or I didn't really recognize.
Code:
com.dylan.tube = [Non-Market App] Tubemate
com.gau.golauncherex.notification = GO Launcher EX (READ SMS)
com.levelup.beautifulwidgets = Beautiful Widgets (LevelUp)?
com.revsodev.volumecontrol = [Non-Market App] Volume Control (Cyrket?)
com.swype.android.inputmethod = Swype?
com.tencent.research.drop = QQPlayer (no perms req'd?)
net.bajawa.battery = BattStatt (no perms req'd?)
org.sipdroid.sipua = Sipdroid VoIP + video
The Road Warrior has an idea which is sort of useful; but I'll modify it to use binary division.
Start with a freshly installed, clean ROM, and only install half of your apps. (I would put all of your most frequently used apps in the first half, and delay any non-market apps as long as possible). Here's how this goes:
- if the "half" you put on the phone is trouble-free (long enough to know the SMS popup thing is not going on), then, install half of the remaining apps, and wait again to see if there is a problem.
- if the "half" you put on the phone develops trouble, then you know that the problem app is in that group. Wipe the phone and re-install all prior "halves" (that caused no trouble), but split the current half (the group containing the suspect app) in half, and only install that. Proceed in this fashion until you are down to the app which causes the trouble.
If you have 128 apps on your phone, and you wait 1 day between installations, it will take 7 days to find the malicious app. (And if you don't get a failure within the first two days, your phone will have 3/4s of it's apps installed - that's not too bad).
The thing is though, even if you had an app compromise your phone, it might not be an "app" that is doing the dirty work any longer. For example, the most recently discovered malware ran rooting exploits against the device, and once successful, downloaded and installed "other stuff". That "other stuff" could be native binaries. So, examining permissions in the system manifest doesn't necessarily guarantee that you have exhaustively looked at your phone, or discovered all possible means of interacting with the SMS system.
It might be "just an app", though - and if it were me, the first ones that I would suspect are non-Market apps, or apps that *cough* got downloaded from "freeware" sites.
Thanks for the responses. I actually did a fresh flash last night. First thing I installed was tubemate (running through non market apps) and it did it. Ironically I added some money to my account to see if I could get the number it was trying to text. Apparently it still couldn't go through.
Sent from my FroShedYo V10-ERIS using XDA App
I had a game from a Chinese developer that stole my gmail. Log into yours from the website and see if you get a red warning.
Sent from my GSBv1.9 ERIS using XDA App
viogrep said:
Thanks for the responses. I actually did a fresh flash last night. First thing I installed was tubemate (running through non market apps) and it did it. Ironically I added some money to my account to see if I could get the number it was trying to text. Apparently it still couldn't go through.
Sent from my FroShedYo V10-ERIS using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm always amazed when something I suggested actually works. LOL. It's just that I'm used to things being more complicated than I hope.
Glad you figured out the trouble!
Thanks bt and RW for the help.
As far as the gmail thing... I use a different gmail address on my phone with email forwarded (different pass)...
If it gets taken I just stop the forwarding and make a new one. Makes things a more simple. Sure, they can see past emails, but they cant request passes/info from other sites... (I also monitor the login IPs in gmail, religiously. Just a habbit.)
viogrep said:
Thanks bt and RW for the help.
As far as the gmail thing... I use a different gmail address on my phone with email forwarded (different pass)...
If it gets taken I just stop the forwarding and make a new one. Makes things a more simple. Sure, they can see past emails, but they cant request passes/info from other sites... (I also monitor the login IPs in gmail, religiously. Just a habbit.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're welcome. You could just change your password from the web if your phone gets stolen.
Especially since it's the gmail address you use on your phone that everything is sync'd to, not the one that's forwarding to it. So if you got another Android phone you'd lose all your contact info and bought and installed apps info, calendar and such. Unless you sync them manually which is so much harder in my experience.
Or you could use one of the many free apps out there that would let you remotely do many things to your phone. Turn the GPS on, triangulate your phone, make your phone scream, do a factory reset to erase everything...
Just a suggestion.
Hi Everyone,
Basically, I got my Samsung Galaxy Player 4.0 in January, and when it comes to the features, I have been loving it. This is my first Android device.
However, I have been having problems lately. First, some basic information: it's an 8gb device, and I have a 32gb class 10 microSD card in it. I have a huge number of apps on it (over 200), however, I keep careful tabs on what is running in the background, reporting an app if it runs in the background even when not needed and that will reopen if killed, and if I don't really need it, deleting it after a week. I've only had to do that with a couple of apps so far. As I use this a lot as a PDA (I don't have a phone, this basically covers those bases), I have a couple of things that always run in the background, which I want there (textplus, Linphone, MailDroid, SwipePad). After getting rid of the services that I don't need, I'm still looking at over 100MB free RAM. I'm still on the stock ROM, and I'm using GO launcher Ex. I reboot daily.
My problem is that it crashes often - sometimes daily. Usually, it will go something like this: An application freezes, the whole system becomes unresponsive, and I either have to reboot it by holding down the power button for 8 (?) seconds, or something snags and it reboots by itself. Usually the first sign is that the haptic feedback for the home button comes about a second later after I press it - except then it is almost always too late. The power button will usually turn the screen on or off, but the lockscreen won't appear, I'll see the screen as it was before, frozen. Sometimes, it eventually reboots, while sometimes it doesn't, making me hold down the power button to reboot it, and sometimes, just as it will start "becoming unfrozen" (it goes to the home screen and it starts loading), it will reboot.
It seems to be that after an approximate time of active use, it will crash. Before that, apps can freeze, FC, and within a few seconds, I'll be back on the home screen or in another app, doing something else. After that, on the other hand, it seems to me that whenever an app freezes or has a problem, it basically takes down the whole system with it.
Something tells me that this isn't just normal (otherwise Android wouldn't have over 50% of smart phone market share ), because I haven't heard of problems like this before, and other people with Android I know don't seem to be having the same problems (if any, at all). I have been reading around, and saw some thread about another phone describing similar problems, and it turns out it was a motherboard problem, so the phone was returned for warranty, except I don't remember where that was, I'm just hoping it's something like that...
OK, now that you've read my long post (sorry, I thought it would be best to give more details than get asked about them), I really hope this isn't something normal, because outside of this problem, I'm really enjoying all the possibilities, capabilities and flexibilities of Android (I'm looking at you, iPod). It's really quite aggravating, today I lost my public transit itinerary on Google Maps (I feature I love), and thankfully, I remembered enough to make it through, but it is quite frustrating. Please tell me this is not Android being Android?
Go Launcher is not Officially supported on these devices and swallows the small amount of ram very quickly, I tried it for a day and got rid of it because of how badly it impacted performance.
edit: looks like since I tried it they added support for our players, still won't run it, its to much of a system hog.
I don't know, but I tried switching to the default launcher, and it already crashed earlier than usual. Any other ideas? I'll try some other launchers over the next few days.
Sounds like you are running out of system resources. You say you have a couple hundred apps installed and I bet some of those are becoming active and hogging precious ram and cpu resources in the background until the system crashes. I have a 2 year old Samsung Captivate and I only have minimal amount of apps because it will often big down and become unresponsive and crash. So before you head out to a repair shop, remove some of your many apps and see if that helps.
So, if I understand, even if an app runs in the background for a short period of time, it still consumes resources, even after it's stopped running?
trainman261 said:
So, if I understand, even if an app runs in the background for a short period of time, it still consumes resources, even after it's stopped running?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have a titanium backup freeze apps that run in backround and see what happens ..when you open programs they will stay in memory so use some memory kill widget to clean memory from time to time.I have a stock rom witch is not very good with memory menagment so sometimes when memory is full it just stop and only help is restarting ..so i use app "quick system info" which give you memory ajd cpy usage displayed in status bar and when memory is close 2 full i just click on that and it kill all other aps except what a use in that moment.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA
So, basically, the ROM is to blame? As to Titanium backup, I think that needs root, and I'm not quite ready to root yet (I've done enough hacking on my iPod). I do plan on upgrading to android 4.0 eventually (once all the issues get fixed, this is my main device, after all), and I think I'm going to have to root it at that point, but I'll be able to test it on a different ROM then, as well as try freezing apps. For now, I've tried LauncherPro, which seems a lot more lightweight, and it seems to be making it through the day until I reboot, and seems to be very stable... it also loads my widgets lightnight fast, which is great.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understand it is:
obviously there are memory leaks, every OS has that
Android will not kill services, but only programs
If there are places where memory can be freed, Android will do that when necessary
If no memory can be freed, and there is barely any memory left, than a minor FC or a frozen app is all it will need to push Android off the cliff
Is this the way it works? And, then, when I upgrade to 4.0 (CM9), most of those problems should be gone (because of better memory management)?
Hey everyone, I'm working on my first Android app and ran into an issue that I haven't been able to solve after hours of searching...
When testing my app in the emulator, it launches perfectly fine the first time. However, if I exit the app using the Back button (which sends it to the Stop state I believe), if I try to reopen the app, it instantly force closes.
The error comes up on the setContentView(R.layout.main); part of the code inside the onCreate. LogCat has a number of errors like "Error inflating" and stuff.
I've only done WP7 development, so Android is all new to me, but according to all the code demos, I'm doing everything right... I can't figure out why it keeps crashing like this! After it force closes, I can launch it like normal again...
I've attached the archive file of my project so you guys could look at the code. There must be something going wrong with it trying to restore from the savedInstanceState, but all the samples I've looked at don't do anything differently! I don't understand what could be going wrong!
Thanks!
Ahh apparently I was asking too much of Android and was getting out of memory errors. Funny thing is it works fine on android 2.2 but if I try it on 4.0 it always crashes and NEVER opens.
Time to rewrite stuff...
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA
Be aware that, on Android, the second launch is often different from the first.
When you 'exit' after your first launch your activities are all destroyed (if you really exited) but the process remains in memory along with some resources and other objects.
This means that your second launch is not a fresh start like the first. For example, if you didn't clean up your activities properly when they closed after your first launch, that could cause a problem upon second launch.
You can see all of this in DDMS. Note that your process is still around after you exit. You can hit stop on the process to kill it (though Android will re-launch it in some circumstances).
So as I've stated in one of the update threads, I've been getting terrible battery life since the recent update. After getting fed up with my battery draining at 6% an hour with the screen off with Ultra-Powersaving enabled (combine this with when I'm actually using the phone and I couldn't even go 6 hours without having to charge the phone) I finally decided to install BetterBatteryStats. After about a 3 hour test window yesterday of which about 1 hour 25 mins was screen on and the rest screen off, battery was at 42%, and there were 700+ wakelocks from "com.carrieriq.iqagent.Wakelock", which according to BBS accounted for 30+ minutes of the CPU being awake (which was more than triple the time of the notorious NlpCollectorWakelock that was also present).
After some searching, as I had no idea what Carrier IQ was, I discovered it is a piece of pre-installed software by the carrier that is supposedly used to collect diagnostics data for the carrier, but most likely has the ability to collect much more than that, and critcally, has no opt-out. It has been described in the past as a rootkit, and has been the source of much controversy back when it was discovered to be able to log keystrokes in 2011, which resulted in many device manufacturers and carriers ceasing using it, and even taking legal action against the company. Apparently ASUS and/or AT&T was not one of those companies.
After learning about this, I sought to confirm my device had this software installed. I was able to confirm by downloading Lookout's Carrier IQ Detector from the play store. According to Lookout's app my Padfone X does have Carrier IQ installed.
I am posting this to:
1. Inform all of you that your device may also have this pre-installed rootkit
2. Find out of anyone knows of or can find an up to date way to remove it if possible, as most of the apps that the articles link are from 2011 and were buggy even then
3. See if anyone can verify my concerns as all this research was done in a small amount of time on my phone
Side note: This is possibly the final straw for me. Between the hardware and software problems, and now if I am correct about this, I am thoroughly regretting getting this device.
Disclaimer: All the research I did was done in what little free time I have at work on my phone. Most of the articles consulted are from 2011,and may reflect the opinion of the software at the time. For all I know Carrier IQ could be more privacy conscious now, but personally I don't want this software on my phone.
Screenshots of BBS and the Lookout app are attached.
I no longer have this device but your research does reflect the 2011 versions of CarrierIQ. I didn't know it was still around at all, so no clue.
I found the same thing about a month ago i am very pissed at at&t, Infringing on their customer's privacy but that is another rant. I think i have found a way to stop iq carrier, testing with the same apps that confirmed it is on my padfone. It is a pain and with my genius there is probably an easier way but here is what i have done.
Needless to say this will void your warranty! I am not responsible for any bricking or dam age that may occur!
Also be warned if your battery dies or you restart your phone you will get a continual pop-up saying unfortunately android system has crashed. It is a pain but you can get back and rename the file as described below and everything will run fine, it just takes fast fingers.
Required.
Root via towel root 1
Root explorer
After rooting use root explorer go to system/lib/libiq_client.so, press and hold a menu will open remove the letter o from so.
The line below that is libiq_service.so again remove the letter o from .so.
I had originally renamed .so to .bak but when i restarted my phone the renaming process was time consuming .
More removal
Picked up a PFX from ebay for cheap recently, and was disappointed to find out that CarrierIQ is still a thing.
I installed the Voodoo CarrierIQ detector to get an idea how bad it was: score of 270 with CIQ active. 200 of that from a running system process, the other 70 from two lib files in /system/lib (libiq_service.so and libiq_client.so)
I googled around and came across some de-CIQ instructions for the AT&T LG G3 here.
Most of the guide applies, but a few things are different. For example, there doesn't seem to be a "LADDM.apk" on the PFX, but it might simply have a different name. If it does, I dunno what it is.
Anyway, here's what I did to get my Voodoo score from 270/active to 70/inactive.
NOTE: I currently do not have my PFX activated on a mobile carrier (wanted to get it all setup first), so there's a chance that one of the below changes might mess with the phone radios, but I highly doubt it.
1. Install the usual mod tools: Towelroot, supersu, busybox, twrp recovery, make a nandroid backup, etc. Guides for these can be found in the other PFX topics.
2. Download "3C Toolbox" from the Play Store. (app used to go by the name Android Toolbox)
3. Open it, give it root permissions, and select "do not show this message again" so it won't pop up every time you go to a different screen.
4. Open up the Application Manager on the second screen (swipe from left once)
5. Near the top of the screen, right above the free space, swipe the tabs to the left and select Apps.
6. Near the bottom of the screen, above the ad, there's a blue button that says "User", press it once so it switches to red and "System".
7. Long-press on Android System > Open (top-left) > Details.
8. Similar to #5, there's tabs near the top of the screen: Details, Activities, Providers, etc.
9. Under the Activities, Receivers, and Services tabs, uncheck anything that starts with "com.carrieriq".
10. Exit and reboot the PFX.
11. Start up Voodoo CarrierIQ Detector. Score is now 70! ("CarrierIQ elements found - however it seems inactive").
In regards to the libs in /system/lib, if I rename libiq_service.so to something else and reboot, the phone still behaves normally, but if I try to rename libiq_client.so and reboot, I get constant popups saying that com.android.phone has crashed.
So, technically it's not fully removed, but it's a step in the right direction!
Let me preface my question with some info. I know my way around android and have been flashing roms since the first non-google rom was created. I also have extensive linux/windows/cli experience. My experience falls a little short when it comes to the more modern (and customized) android internals (such as which packages are required by what these days).
I already have the GlobmallX1 and while experiencing issues I decided I wanted to further clean the junk off of it. I also have an H96 Pro + ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06W2L2WTY ) that will be here on Monday that I would like to clean off before we start using it. The only things I really need on these boxes are going to be Kodi and Netflix. I would like the play store installed and obviously anything required for the remote/wifi to function.
I am seeing a ton of packages installed that at first glance I would assume are not required, however I want to avoid killing the box by removing packages that are required by others. The Globmall came with Kodi and a Kodi updater preinstalled. I am probably going to backup the kodi install and wipe both of those out and install manually so I know the package has not been tampered with. I found a lot of stuff in /system/preinstall that I would like to get rid of, but again unsure if any are required. I looked into finding a clean rom to use instead for the H96 but it seems they all are missing something (sound, 4k, wifi, etc). I also searched for apps that might have some internal bloatware database however everything I found seems to be trash and just shows all apps and sends you to settings to uninstall.
My questions:
1: Is there an easy way to check a package to see if its required/important/malicious (either an app, or something I can do via adb)?
2: On these china kodi boxes, can the entire /system/preinstall dir be wiped out and the device reset safely?
3: I am seeing word that as long as the cpu and wifi chip match, roms from similar boxes can normally be safely flashed. I know flashing is in general not "safe" and has risk, but am I likely to find clean android roms that are fully working?
4: Does anyone know if there is a good place to find bash precompiled for arm(v8l)? I really hate this 'toybox' shell that I am finding on the boxes I have.
5: Last question is regarding a netflix issue I am having that I think is a problem on the box. Has anyone seen this before?:
Netflix was previously working a few weeks ago. I didnt use it frequently so I dont know when it broke. Basically what happens is I can load netflix and click on a show. The show will load and play about 1-4 seconds of video and a popup will appear (error 0013) saying it could not connect to the netflix service. While this popup is playing, the video sometimes pauses with audio continuing for a few seconds and sometimes freezes on a single frame. This happens on about 80% of the shows I try to play, however the 3 shows we want to use netflix for are all in that group.
This morning, I tried a couple older Netflix apks (I was running 4.13.3):
4.11.0, 4.12.1, 4.13.0, 4.13.1, 4.13.2
All experienced the same issue (again, why I feel the issue is with the box and not the app). A few other things Ive tested are resolution (1080p and 2160p) and enabling/disabling HDR (heard this can cause netflix/kodi issues).
I know this is a massive dump, but any help on any of the questions above will be appreciated. I have googled and searched forums for each of these, so If the answers are there I may be searching for the wrong thing. Thanks in advance.
Nothing? Is this a bad forum to post this on?