A computer researcher, John Gordon has discovered a way to bypass the phone lock on an android phone in an easy way.
The secret to doing that, Gordon said, in a report published earlier this week, is to type in a really long password. While the steps look easy, they appear equally time-consuming
In a video demonstration confirming his theory, Gordon said: “From the locked screen, open the phone’s ‘Emergency Call’ feature. Type a few characters; then copy-and-paste the text repeatedly. The character ‘string’ grows exponentially, so it quickly becomes close to 40,960 characters long.
“Then open the phone’s camera app and prompt the phone to request a password. Paste the super long character string a few times until the system crashes.
“Wait maybe five minutes, and the phone goes straight to the unlocked home screen.”
According to Gordon, the security flaw only affects Google’s latest Android operating system, Lollipop.
The researcher reportedly made this known to Google, and the company responded by fixing the fault on their own range of phones – the Nexus.
It is still not yet clear when other phone brands that operate on the OS – Samsung, LG, and others – will get this fix.