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Comment on Are Android unlock patterns as secure as numeric PINs? by Milen

Milen — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 16:01:01 +0000

If you mean no general solution at all versus no general solution has been found yet, that would be a real shame. There are some pretty cool symmetries there.

Comment on Are Android unlock patterns as secure as numeric PINs? by Alexander Lobkovsky Meitiv

Alexander Lobkovsky Meitiv — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 14:53:21 +0000

Unfortunately, there is no general solution. The search algorithm would have to be modified for each new geometry. Also, there is no analytical solution even for the simplest geometries.

Comment on Are Android unlock patterns as secure as numeric PINs? by Milen

Milen — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 08:09:05 +0000

Hey guys – I’m just interested in the combinatorial solution to this problem, so Alex if you (or anyone else that may have the solution) can post it I’d be grateful. I was also wondering if we extrapolate the rules, but instead apply them to NxN squares of nodes, what would be the general solution? Finally, what would happen if you tweaked the geometry so it’s not arranged in a square, but a rectangle or a straightedge, or some other weird shape – would that affect the general solution?

Comment on Are Android unlock patterns as secure as numeric PINs? by Vincenzo Alcamo

Vincenzo Alcamo — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 15:41:39 +0000

The number of valid patters of at least 4 dots is 389112. The result can be "easily" achieved using SQL with ORACLE DB: create table android(id varchar2(9), primary key (id)); insert into android with nums as (select rownum d from dual connect by rownum <= 9) select seq from ( select n1.d || n2.d || n3.d || n4.d || n5.d || n6.d || n7.d || n8.d || n9.d seq from nums n1 inner join nums n2 on n2.d not in (n1.d) inner join nums n3 on n3.d not in (n1.d, n2.d) inner join nums n4 on n4.d not in (n1.d, n2.d, n3.d) inner join nums n5 on n5.d not in (n1.d, n2.d, n3.d, n4.d) inner join nums n6 on n6.d not in (n1.d, n2.d, n3.d, n4.d, n5.d) inner join nums n7 on n7.d not in (n1.d, n2.d, n3.d, n4.d, n5.d, n6.d) inner join nums n8 on n8.d not in (n1.d, n2.d, n3.d, n4.d, n5.d, n6.d, n7.d) inner join nums n9 on n9.d not in (n1.d, n2.d, n3.d, n4.d, n5.d, n6.d, n7.d, n8.d) ) a where not regexp_like(seq, '13.*2|17.*4|19.*5|28.*5|31.*2|37.*5|39.*6|64.*5|93.*6|97.*8|91.*5|82.*5|73.*5|71.*4|79.*8|46.*5'); select (select count(distinct substr(id,1,9)) from android) +(select count(distinct substr(id,1,8)) from android) +(select count(distinct substr(id,1,7)) from android) +(select count(distinct substr(id,1,6)) from android) +(select count(distinct substr(id,1,5)) from android) +(select count(distinct substr(id,1,4)) from android) as num from dual;

Comment on Are Android unlock patterns as secure as numeric PINs? by jsz

jsz — Sun, 13 May 2012 11:08:01 +0000

Forgot the link… https://gist.github.com/2687787

Comment on Are Android unlock patterns as secure as numeric PINs? by jsz

jsz — Sun, 13 May 2012 11:07:19 +0000

The nodes that can connect are a little more dynamic. For example, you can go from 1 to 4 to 0 to 2, i.e. 0 to 2 is possible, which is not allowed by the “edges” array in your code.

Here is my try. It’s almost a direct translate of your code from python to c. You simply have to take the current “visited” table into account.

The result is 389112.

Comment on Are Android unlock patterns as secure as numeric PINs? by Alexander Lobkovsky Meitiv

Alexander Lobkovsky Meitiv — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:53:11 +0000

You can install a recovery on Samsung phones by putting the phone into download mode and flashing the recovery using heimdall or odin.

Comment on Are Android unlock patterns as secure as numeric PINs? by David Barr

David Barr — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:51:05 +0000

But how do you install Clockworkmod without getting past the lock screen or wiping the data from the phone?

There was another article on Slashdot yesterday about a company that can break phone security, but the article doesn’t say whether or not they can get past pattern protected phones:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/03/27/heres-how-law-enforcement-cracks-your-iphones-security-code-video/

Comment on Are Android unlock patterns as secure as numeric PINs? by Alexander Lobkovsky Meitiv

Alexander Lobkovsky Meitiv — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:08:42 +0000

Clearly these so called “experts” don’t know what they are doing. All you have to do is install Clockworkmod recovery and then mount “data” from it to have complete access to the partition. To my knowledge the databases on the /data partition are not encrypted by default.

Comment on Are Android unlock patterns as secure as numeric PINs? by Ben

Ben — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 22:12:57 +0000

Though there may be fewer available combinations of patterns than PINs, the system is substantially harder to crack than a numerical PIN. Here’s a piece of news from a couple of weeks ago showing that this years-old technology has stumped the FBI. http://m.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/fbi-android-phone-lock/