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Efreak/1. Copying steam guard from rooted to unrooted device.md

Last active March 14, 2023 16:00
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Move steam mobile from rooted device to unrooted device without losing steam guard keys
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1. Copying steam guard from rooted to unrooted device.md

Steam mobile doesn't allow you to use adb backups to move steam guard keys to your new device. This means if you use WinAuth or other tools that use the steam guard private key obtained from a rooted device, they will stop working when you switch devices and set up a new steam guard. The process below will allow you to move your steam guard key from a rooted device to an unrooted device.

notes:

A. when installing old versions of apps from unofficial sources, it's important to verify that they're legitimate. One way to do this is to install the old version, then try updating it through the play store--this process will not work if the signatures don't match.

B. don't keep unencrypted backups around. 2fa doesn't help if someone else gets ahold of it. Titanium backups are standard compressed files/folders, and adb backups are tar files with a few extra bytes at the beginning (the beginning of the file is at a fixed offset), and it's trivial to extract files from them. I'm not sure how secure adb password protected backups are.

C. adb backup comes with a warning that it may be deprecated. if it is, the adb shell command may help, I believe there's a backup command in the shell somewhere (ab? not sure). On the other hand, that may also be removed at the same time.

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2. Rooted device.md

Rooted old device (with steam guard key)

  1. use titanium backup to backup steam mobile with steam guard codes
  2. Uninstall steam mobile (unnecessary if xposed or other tools allow you to downgrade apps that disallow it)
  3. Install steam mobile version 2.1.4. Make sure to verify it's legitimate; you can do this by updating it in Google Play--if it updates successfully, the signature matches; uninstall it and reinstall the old version again, otherwise you'll need to find a different source
  4. Use titanium backup to restore data only from current up-to-date version of steam mobile into steam 2.1.4. Do not run steam after this, I'm not sure if it will actually work, and it may corrupt data--this is a >5 year old version of steam
  5. Turn on ADB (android settings, developer tools, usb debugging) and plug rooted device into computer
  6. Run command adb backup -noshared -apk -obb -f oldsteam.ab
  7. Disable adb and unplug rooted tablet

If you intend to continue using steam here, make sure to update it first.

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3. Unrooted device.md

Unrooted device (without steam guard key)

  1. uninstall steam if installed (required on my phone, not on my tablet)
  2. Turn on adb as in step 5, and plug in unrooted device.
  3. Run command adb restore http://oldsteam.ab
  4. Delete all copies of all backups
  5. Turn off adb and unplug device
  6. Go to play store on new device, and update steam mobile to latest version
  7. Run steam mobile. It'll prompt you for login, and your steam guard code will be at the bottom of the screen like normal
@D0geDev
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D0geDev commented Sep 12, 2022

In my case it was possible to make a backup with this command - "adb backup -f valve.ab -noapk com.valvesoftware.android.steam.community", then "adb restore valve.ab". Tested on steam 2.1.4 and S20+ unrooted.

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