I wrote the following attached PERL routines for reading/decrypting/decompressing and writing/encrypting/compressing adb backup format backup files.
The routines are:
backupdecrypt.pl: Decrypt (and decompress) android backup file
backupencrypt.pl: Encrypt (and decompress) android backup file
tarfix.pl: Fix broken tar files produced by android backup when using -shared flag
The first two routines allow for reading and writing to the standard ".ab" adb backup format.
Backupdecrypt.pl takes an '.ab' file as input and outputs a standard format tar file (which may be optionally gzip'd).
Backupencrypt.pl takes an arbitrary file (though typically it should be tar file) as input and outputs a standard ".ab" format backup file. Options include the ability to encrypt (or not) and deflate (or not) the backup. Also, one can automatically decompress most standard input formats before encrypting.
For encryption, passwords can be queried for or passed on the command line or read from a file.
NOTE: unfortunately the standard 'adb backup' routine seem to have a SEVERE *BUG* in it when using the '--shared' option in combination with certain other options.
First, the backup is not compressed even though the header claims it is. To get around this, backupdecrypt.pl has a --nocompress option to override the header.
Second, the encapsulated tar file is corrupted by the insertion of 4 extra bytes before every file header and before every group of 64 512-byte blocks of data.
The third routine tarfix.pl fixes this corruption and outputs a normal readable tar file. So, if you are not able to recover a valid tar backup file using backupdecrypt.pl, try doing the following:
backupdecrypt.pl --nocompress <backup.ab> <backupdata>
tarfix.pl backupdata | tar xv
Enjoy!
NOTE: I am incredibly grateful to Nikolay Elenkov for providing sample java routines and for help in understanding the encryption formats
The routines are:
backupdecrypt.pl: Decrypt (and decompress) android backup file
backupencrypt.pl: Encrypt (and decompress) android backup file
tarfix.pl: Fix broken tar files produced by android backup when using -shared flag
The first two routines allow for reading and writing to the standard ".ab" adb backup format.
Backupdecrypt.pl takes an '.ab' file as input and outputs a standard format tar file (which may be optionally gzip'd).
Backupencrypt.pl takes an arbitrary file (though typically it should be tar file) as input and outputs a standard ".ab" format backup file. Options include the ability to encrypt (or not) and deflate (or not) the backup. Also, one can automatically decompress most standard input formats before encrypting.
For encryption, passwords can be queried for or passed on the command line or read from a file.
NOTE: unfortunately the standard 'adb backup' routine seem to have a SEVERE *BUG* in it when using the '--shared' option in combination with certain other options.
First, the backup is not compressed even though the header claims it is. To get around this, backupdecrypt.pl has a --nocompress option to override the header.
Second, the encapsulated tar file is corrupted by the insertion of 4 extra bytes before every file header and before every group of 64 512-byte blocks of data.
The third routine tarfix.pl fixes this corruption and outputs a normal readable tar file. So, if you are not able to recover a valid tar backup file using backupdecrypt.pl, try doing the following:
backupdecrypt.pl --nocompress <backup.ab> <backupdata>
tarfix.pl backupdata | tar xv
Enjoy!
NOTE: I am incredibly grateful to Nikolay Elenkov for providing sample java routines and for help in understanding the encryption formats