A Security researcher and hacker, named John Gordon, has found an easy way to bypass the security of locked smartphones runningAndroid 5.0 and5.1 (Build LMY48M).
Many of us use various security locks on our devices like Pattern lock, PIN lock and Password lock in order to protect the privacy of our devices.
However, a vulnerability could now allow anyone to take your Android smartphone (5.0 build LMY48I) with locked screen, perform a “MAGIC TRICK” and as a result crash the user interface (UI) for the password screen and gain access to your device.
The vulnerability, assigned CVE-2015-3860, has been dubbed as “Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability in Lockscreen”.
The secret behind the researcher’s “MAGIC TRICK” is as follows:
All this is done to make the camera app crash. Further, you will notice the soft buttons (home and back button) at the bottom of the screen will disappear, which is an indication that will enable the app to crash.
At this time, stop your actions and wait for the camera app to become unresponsive.
After a moment, the app will crash and get you to the Home Screen of the device with all the encrypted and unencrypted data.
Now without wasting time go toSettings > Developer options > Enable USB debugging and control the device by installing the**Android Debug Bridge **(ADB) utility.
Watch the video demonstration given below, where you can see practically how Gordon executed the hack.
In addition to this, if we notice the number of users with Android 5.0 and 5.1 with hardware compatibility as Nexus 4 and software installed as Google factory image - occam 5.1.1 (LMY47V) are less. Therefore, the risk associated will affect those users only.
Furthermore, for those users we have a good news that is- the patch has released for the vulnerability and is made public by Google.