Touchscreens open to smudge attacks…seriously?
I just had a chuckle at the University of Penn’s research which has gone to lengths exploring how hackable Android is using the humble smudge.
Basically it states that by looking at the glass, a user is able to accurately replicate your phone unlock pattern and get to your phone.
My response to this is… YOU DIDN’T KNOW? The amazing thing about this is that anyone who has had an android phone knows that the pattern unlock can be replicated. Good tips are to make sure you regularly wipe your screen, or if you have Froyo ( android 2.2) on your phone, you use a secret pin number to lock your phone instead.
Note to Google, personally I think that pattern unlocking will really become useful, if Android allows you to overwrite a connection, ie let you go over the same connection twice or three times to make sure that the smudges cannot be replicated.
The best way to protect your phone is to invest in an app like Wavesecure, which can remote lock and wipe your phone if its ever stolen. ( you can currently get a 20% discount voucher to it by listing your top 5 apps in our forum section here)
If you ever lose your phone, make sure you have take note of your imei number so you can report it to your network/ police.
If you want to find your IMEI , you can press *#06# on your phone, or download an IMEI app from Google market.
Touchscreens open to smudge attacks | Security | News | PC Pro.
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Just a sidenote: WaveSecure is not really secure at all. You can uninstall it by plugging the phone with USB to a computer and running “adb uninstall com.wavesecure.android”.
Actually they have a counter to this, which is a second installer which checks for the primary. Its not removable.
Interesting read, but (at least in my case) inapplicable. I don’t simply use my unlock pattern then leave my phone laying around. After I have unlocked my phone I USE IT which smudges over the unlock pattern. The pattern is obscured until the next time I use it to unlock my phone, at which time, by using it, the unlock pattern is again obscured. Lather, rinse, repeat…