From numerical PIN codes and alphabetical passwords to pattern locks and fingerprint scanners, smartphones these days have it all. In fact, some companies are taking a step forward by using iris scanning technology to authenticate the real owner of the device. But 40 percent of Android smartphone owners still use pattern locks to protect their phones from intruders.
Most users think using a complex pattern lock will protect the sensitive information stored on your Android phones. Sure, they do from your siblings and your friends, but not some qualified hackers.
According to a research by Lancaster University in Britain, Northwest University in China and University of Bath, Germany, pattern lock is a vulnerable choice to protect your Android smartphone from attackers, who can use video and computer vision algorithm software to crack them open within five attempts.
After five unsuccessful attempts, pattern lock on an Android smartphone is disabled and the device gets locked. According to the researchers, attackers can secretly record the owner drawing the pattern lock shape on the phone to unlock the device, and then use software to produce a small number of patterns that will unlock the device.
"People tend to use complex patterns for important financial transactions such as online banking and shopping because they believe it is a secure system. However, our findings suggest that using Pattern Lock to protect sensitive information could actually be very risky," Zheng Wang, principle investigator and co-author of the paper, said in a statement.
Guixin Ye, the leading student author from Northwest University, added that using shorter and simpler patterns can be more secure than complex pattern locks. As per the tests conducted to prove this point, researchers were able to crack all but one of the complex pattern locks in first attempt and had a success rate of 87.5 percent and 60 percent for median and simple patterns, respectively.
For the research, 120 unique patterns were collected from independent users and 95 percent of them were cracked within five attempts.
