Researchers Develop New Technique to Steal Unlock Patterns

Researchers from UK’s Lancaster University and Linköping University in Sweden have developed a new technique called SonarSnoop which can be used to steal unlock patterns on smart devices such as phones and tablets.

The technique works by turning a smartphone’s built-in speaker and microphone into a sonar system. An attacker do this by infecting the target device with a malware that can make it emit sounds inaudible to humans. The sound waves bouncing off the user’s finger when unlocking the phone can then be picked up by the device’s microphone.

The researchers said that the technique does not yield a 100% accurate result at present, but accuracy is expected to significantly improve overtime. The researchers published their findings in a paper called “SonarSnoop: Active Acoustic Side-Channel Attacks.”

Source: ZDNet