Hackers could crack smartphones via visual clues

Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - 09:58 by Mike Price

Researchers at Newcastle University have identified a potentially problematic security flaw facing smartphone users who protect their devices using a password or PIN, according to BBC News.

Most mobile platforms require a four digit code to unlock the display and gain access to the information and services available within. But by analysing the way that people hold and tilt their devices while they are entering this code, the team has come up with a fast way of guessing it without having to see the display at all.

Within just five guesses the solution developed by Dr Maryam Mehrnezhad and his associates is capable of cracking the password of a user by analysing the motion data relayed from sensors embedded throughout modern devices.

For anyone who regularly makes purchases online from their smartphone, or who uses it for other sensitive purposes, such as online banking, social networking and general communications, this could be seen as a major problem.

Dr Mehrnezhad explained that hackers could operate malicious sites which, when visited from a smartphone, would allow passwords to be stolen and private data to become compromised.

He also said that people tend to be familiar with security issues related with providing apps and sites with access to location-based data from their mobile’s built-in GPS system. Meanwhile, the fact that data from sensors is often freely available to third parties is not seen as that much of a problem, in spite of findings to the contrary.

To carry out shopping online it is necessary to take a number of precautions, whether using a desktop PC or a mobile device. And disabling motion sensing capabilities to avoid suffering from identity theft or fraud may be necessary until platform makers come up with a solution to this.