The Stage fright attack on my phone has turned ugly. The only thing I can do with the phone is accept an occasional phone call. I cannot (as in: can not) type, make a phone call, get to a different menu item, etc. In addition, there is a small notification in the lower-left corner saying that the phone is in safe mode (I thought you had that only in Windows).
When do you expect to have the patch ready? And until then, what should I do to have some phone functionality? The “peace” application lasts rather long
Any work-around (so that I can make a phone call) is welcome
Why do you think this has something to do with stage fright?
Maybe I missed something but Safe Mode is usually an indication that you installed some app that causes problems and you should uninstall it.
Why Stagefright: timing, type of behavioral change, and the fact that I rarely if ever install software. The only SW I installed was some sound recorder SW, but uninstalled it before the weird behavior showed. I downloaded the SW via Google Apps.
Initially I could not start the appl. list (long press), or go back to the previous screen. When I rebooted the phone initially behaved normally, but after a while “frooze” again. Right now the “save mode” notification is visible.
Taking all together Stagefright seemed a reasonable conclusion. Anyway, Stagefright, something else is not so relevant to me; the phone is useless. So any suggestions how to get it going again are appreciated
First of all, to be concise: Stagefright is the name of a software library that’s part of Android. This library contains the security problem that can be exploited. It’s not the name of the exploit itself.
As for your phone, it is extremely unlikely this has something to do with the exploit. I don’t even think it has actually been used yet. The exploit itself gives you unwarranted access (at root level) to someone’s phone. After the exploit, the attacker still needs to push something malicious to the phone or use the exploit to steal data. That your phone is booting into safe mode is a very unlikely symptom of such an exploit.
I don’t think I need to mention much more because most of it is already explained.
Just wanted to add how you can get your phone into “Safe mode”.
- Please note that this can have affect on app settings (i.e. reset their settings to default)
To get your phone in safe mode hold the power button to pop up the shutdown/restart/airplane mode panel.
Now long press the Power off button and reboot the phone as it suggests.
After the reboot your phone will be in safe mode. To get out of safe mode you can simply restart the phone again.
- Please note that this can have affect on app settings (i.e. reset their settings to default)