Your Greasy Fingers Are Giving Up Your Android Passcode [Security]

We’d seen this for ourselves earlier this year, but now it’s been proven by science: grease marks, touchscreens and swiped passcodes do not a secure Android phone make.

In ” Smudge Attacks on Smartphone Touch Screens” -which should have been more fun to name than to write down-University of Pennsylvania researchers tested how easily passwords may be extracted from an Android touchscreen using quite a number methods. The answer: very, very easy. Your oily fingers leave a trace so distinct that partial passcodes were, in one set of experiments, identifiable 92% of the time.

You’ve got a number of options to combat the protection risk: one could be to look ahead to Froyo and its delicious QWERTY password option. The alternative? Turn all of your screen into a grease mine so that no pattern emerges. Who knew the KFC Double Down was the appropriate bodyguard your phone ever had? [UPenn via Techdirt]

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This post is tagged: android, fingers, giving, greasy, passcode, security