Android phones could be vulnerable to crackers and hackers due to owners' dumbfounding dearth of innovativeness, it has risen. The abundance of passwords breaks over the previous decade has uncovered the most commonly used and hence most vulnerable—passphrases, including "watchword", "p@$$w0rd", and "1234567". The extensive assemblage of information has demonstrated priceless to whitehats and blackhats alike in recognizing passwords that all over may seem strong however can be cracked in a matter of seconds.
Google introduced the Android Lock Patterns (ALPs) or password alternative in 2008 with the launch of its Andriod mobile OS.
"Humans are predictable" Løge told Ars last week at the PasswordsCon conference in Las Vegas, where she presented a talk titled Tell Me Who You Are, and I Will Tell You Your Lock Pattern. "We're seeing the same aspects used when creating a pattern locks pin codes and alphanumeric passwords. "It was a really fun thing to see that people use the same type of strategy for remembering a pattern as a password," Løge added.
Eric Zeman, a mobile technology expert who writes for Information Week, said it is "laughably easy" to guess an Android pass pattern. He wrote:
"By now we all know that using "password" or "123456" as your password is about as dumb and lazy as it gets"
"Those are easily guessed and are hardly a speed bump to hackers.
"Pattern locks have the potential to be very secure, but people are lazy with patterns too."
Andriod Lock Patterns contain minimum 4 nodes and maximum 9 nodes so the number of possible combinations are 389,112.
Here's Break Down :
| LENGTH | NUMBER OF COMBINATIONS |
|---|---|
| 4 | 1,624 |
| 5 | 7,152 |
| 6 | 26,016 |
| 7 | 72,912 |
| 8 | 140,704 |
| 9 | 140,704 |
As part of her thesis, Løge asked subjects to create three ALPs, one for an imaginary shopping app, a second for an imaginary banking app, and the last to unlock a smartphone. Sadly, the minimum four-node pattern was the most widely created one by both male and female subjects, followed by five-node ALPs. For reasons Løge still can't explain, eight-node patterns were the least popular, attracting significantly fewer subjects than nine-node choices, even though both offered the same number of possible combinations. The slide below contrasts choices of males on the top with those of females below, showing that the former were much more likely to pick longer patterns over shorter ones.
She found 44% users start their Lock Pattern from Left Top Corner and 77% users start ALPs from one of the four corner nodes. Most moved from left to right whilst many used just four nodes, bringing the total number of possible permutations down to just 1,624 - making it easier to guess the correct combo and crack into a phone.
It was observed that users usually used around five nodes which would result in to around 9000 predictable pattern combinations.
Most common patterns just used four nodes and this reduces the possibility of common combinations to just 1,624 making it easy to be guessed.
Løge says that it is not only the number of nodes used in the ALPs, but also the specific sequence of the nodes used in the pattern which helps to guess the sequence of the pattern. She explained this by giving an example, “Assigning the nine nodes the same digits found on a standard phone interface, the combination 1, 2, 3, 6 will receive a lower complexity score than the combination 2, 1, 3, 6, since the latter pattern changes direction.”
She also discovered that in comparison, males use more complex patterns such as 2,3,1 sequence and females hardly prefer to use such complicated patterns.
Løge, says that similar to the passwords, ALPs also have similar weakness, she found that nearly 10% of the patterns took the shape of the alphabetic letter that corresponded to the first initial of user’s name or their spouse or child or any other person who is pretty close to the user. This indicated that there is one-in-ten chance that attacker can predict the ALP. Suppose, cracker knows the names of the victim or their people it becomes all the more easier guess.
Løge says that by collecting a huge number of ALPs it is possible to build “Markov model” which can help attackers to predict the ALPs.
How To Make ALPs Attack Proof :
Løge also told the ways to make your ALPs strong, better and unpredictable:
- Use whole bunch of nodes
- Use Crossovers (e.g. use combination 2 1 3 6 5)
- Switch of Show Pattern
- Stop starting the pattern from top left node
Now, you came to know that how can be a simple pattern be dangerous to your private data in mobile. So, try to follow above steps and use complex combinations.
Also Read : How to extract PIN code of a smartphone from any Selfie
Also Read : How to extract PIN code of a smartphone from any Selfie
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