[HIB]Touchscreen Smudges Could Reveal Passwords

[newsbot]

Smudges on touchscreens can reveal passwords? That's what researchers from the University of Pennsylvania said in a report during the Usenix security conference. Apparently patterns can be photographed and traced from greasy finger smudges, especially when pattern unlock methods are used."Touchscreens are touched, so oily residues, or smudges, remain on the screen as a side effect," the report said. "Latent smudges may be usable to infer recently and frequently touched areas of the screen--a form of information leakage."The researchers focused on Android because the OS uses a pattern-tracing method (prior to 2.2) to lock and unlock the host device. In order to gain access, users must trace a pattern between four points. The team discovered that--when using this method--it could decipher the phone's pattern 92-percent of the time by taking photos of the screen and then enhancing the contrast.

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