Moving Steam Guard from iOS to Android and back again

[MoShU]

Hey,

I need a bit of guidance with this. I have several lovely bots that love to farm cards and all have 2FA integrated in ASF except ONE. This ONE bot have Steam Guard active on an iPhone.

I would like to enable 2FA on ASF for this ONE bot and here lies the problem, I can't extract the data from the iPhone ( could do in the past[github.com] ) in order to move it to ASF. So my only other choice is to move Steam Guard to an android phone and get it from there.

So the question is this. It is possible to move steam guard to my android (same phone number) get the files I need and then move steam guard back to my iPhone (same phone number) and then having 2FA on both the iPhone and ASF?

Does this make sense or I'm going down a dark alley? My thinking is, if I transfer my steam guard from android to iphone, will the data from android become invalid afterwards? Basically all this exercise will be for nothing.

[Rudokhvist]

Yes, while "moving" authenticator with steam - old data becomes invalid, so it does not makes any sense in doing so. Also, in case if you missed it, to import data to ASF from android phone you will still need root. There are third-party authenticator apps for android, and I've made a mod of SDA with an option to "move" authenticator there as if it was a new phone, so technically it's possible to have authenticator both in ASF and in some third-party app on android phone. But I can't tell much about iphone - no idea if it has any third-party authenticators or only official steam app. I know about those two third-party authenticators for android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beemdevelopment.aegis
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aegamesi.steamtrade . I suggest to check. maybe there is versions for iphone too. If yes - you will be able to move authenticator to SDA on PC, import it to asf, and import to third-party authentication tool on iphone (and to android too, if you want it), so you will have working authenticator in both places.

[MoShU]

I looked to see if there are any third party auth apps on IOS and I found a few (using authy myself) but unfortunately none of them support steam. Since moving to android and back is not feasible I looked at other options.

First I tried to downgrade the steam app version below 2.0.19. Managed to find my old iphone which had 2.0.10 installed. Spent an unimaginable amount of time trying to get the .ipa file from the old phone but I finally figured out and I moved it to the current phone. Fortune wasn't on my side and found out that since ios 12, apple changed the way data is saved as backup, so even though I was using an older version of steam guard, I still wasn't able to extract the information. Trying to downgrade from 14 to 11 is too much of a mammoth task so I decided give it a rest.

I was about done with it when I opened steam guard on the old phone and compared the codes between the two phone and to my surprise it matched. Used the tool I linked above to extract the data, made the .maFile, bish bash bosh, is working now. As to why the old app is still working and have the same details might have something to do with how apple moves your stuff from one iphone to another. Technically I never "moved" the authenticator, when I got the new phone I simply logged in with my apple id and 5 minutes later everything was there.

So I guess I got lucky by having my old iphone, with an old IOS, with an old steam guard which was still active and a day off work spent trying to get .ipa files. I could have spent another day trying but I don't think I would ever got it working any other way.

So if Google ever brings you to this post for some reason know this, if you have iOS 12+ and/or Steam Guard version 2.0.19+, you're pretty much out of luck on extracting the data for your 2FA. (jailbreaking is still an option but that is a different ballpark)

[Archi]

Adding to the above - when we're talking about moving authenticator, we refer to the option that Steam app gives which is in fact invalidating old 2FA credentials and creating new 2FA credentials. This causes the old authenticator to stop working, always.

All kind of copy-pasting the 2FA credentials in-tact are >not< supported by Steam app, but >might be< supported by various other solutions. For example, if iOS synchronizes the application data and replicates it over 2 or more devices, this is in fact such copy-paste, and not moving, which indeed will result in the same authenticator working in two places at once. maFile in ASF is exactly the same thing - a file with valid authenticator details extracted from a working authenticator without invalidating them first.

If what I understand is correct, you had such data replication between two devices, and thanks to older software you were able to extract that data without having to invalidate it first, which is why the 2FA details you have are working in 3 places now - both of your devices, and ASF. I'm positively surprised you were managed to pull that off, because as you can see everybody around made it as difficult as possible, closing all the loopholes which allowed to do that in the past.

[Rudokhvist]

I would also recommend to save original .maFile that you were able to extract in some safe place. ASF does not store all information from .maFile upon import, so if you will ever need it for whatever reason - it will be impossible to get it back from ASF.