Some poor guy locked himself out of his N900

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...ghlight=locked

Sad but true.

Since the N900 is so powerfool I use it for E-Mail, Back-up for family photos and so on.

If you loose it or it gets stolen you don't want anybody to access your data so you protect your phone using the lock funtionallity.

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It should not happen but it does. Somehow you forget your password.

Solution

Since there is no PUK key for the phone (you loose it anyhow)

It should be possible to relock the phone without the password.

Could be like on web-sites

1) personal question - correct answer gives you access

Regards Markus

PS: For the future -> Face recognition (we would finaly get to use the front cam :-)

PUK is sim specific. The lock code though is as was mentioend in other threads stored in a specific location that you can override if you gain access to the device. A simple way is to have a /bootmenu.sh that does something usable for the person that runs it.

In my case(and documented in a thread under Maemo5 iirc) it will give me a full access shell when started with the keyboard slid out and when I have fbcon enabled kernel. Should probably be possible to do an auto reset by using the same approach as the rescue-boot approach.

1) How does this improve the original situation? Questions like "Birthname of your mother" or stuff like that are extremely easy to solve with some social engineering. When I was 15 I accessed other people's email accounts just because of such stupid "personal questions" that were easy to guess.

There is actually no additional security by this. Only that you "feel" more secure. Hence wasted efforts in my opinion....

Face recognition? You know how good current facce recognition is? If not, try it by putting a good picture of another person in front of a camera and see yourself how "secure" this is.

@andre

1) the personal question does not make it more secure. It would be just a way to retrive a password once you are locked out.

How about this.

with your code you leave a mobile number and could have the phone sent the password to this number.

I am not sure if every sim is secured by PIN.

Would that be an idea?

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@ruski

I was just comparing the PUK. Kind of Nokia would send a PUK for the phone instead of the SIM with the phone.

a) A simple way is to have a /bootmenu.sh that does something usable for the person that runs it.

In my case(and documented in a thread under Maemo5 iirc) it will give me a full access shell when started with the keyboard slid out and when I have fbcon enabled kernel. Should probably be possible to do an auto reset by using the same approach as the rescue-boot approach.

Does not sound like a simple way to me. Just using the phone

b) wouldnt it be possible for everyone then. Or would you have to know how to do it? If yes one could just write down the code to the phone - which would be actually easier.

PS: But then you would have to rembember where you wrote it down :-)



Regards Markus