Android Lollipop Can Be Hacked With Very Long Password

Complex passwords are the way to beat some attacks, but for phones running the latest version of Android, that's not necessarily so: puddingebola writes with an excerpt from an article at CNN: Locked phones require a passcode. But there's a way to get around that. Just type in an insanely long password. That overloads the computer, which redirects you to the phone's home screen. It's a time-consuming hack, but it's actually easy to pull off. In a report published Tuesday, computer security researcher John Gordon documented the vulnerability and posted a video of the hack. It only affects smartphones using the latest version of the Android operating system, Lollipop.

Comments

What is old is new

[goombah99]

early versions of mac OSX had a similar problem. 10,000 character password entries would unlock the system. Entering these was aided because the password field accepted emacs key commands (like every other field on a mac) so repeated ctrl-a ctrl-k ctrl-y ctrl-y ctrl-y quickly got you to the passwrd field overload point.

Re:What is old is new

[slo]

Googling, I found this. It sounds like the screen lock vulnerability described.

pin code not vulnerable

[sociocapitalist]

Only works against passwords and only in certain cases.

Does not work against pin codes or swipes.