Android 5.x is vulnerable to hacking attacks

Researchers at the US Austin Information Security Office or ISO have detected a bug in Android 5.x versions. The vulnerability exists in all the versions of Android 5.x except Android 5.1.1. The researchers discovered that it is possible to hack an Android phone that has Android 5.x installed as its operating system.

Any Android based phone with these versions of the operating system can be hacked easily if they have their screens locked with a password. The attack is not possible on a phone with pin lock or a pattern lock. However, despite these limitations, millions of people around the world are vulnerable to these attacks.

For the attack, the attacker requires physical access to the mobile phone after which the attacker needs to follow a few simple steps. The process involves first accessing the emergency call option of the phone and entering a long string of characters and numbers over there. Once the attacker is no longer to add any more input to the password field, the next step is to copy the data that has been entered. Generally the copied data would contain around 110 characters.

After this, the hacker goes back to the main screen and activate the camera app. Once this app is functional, the hacker needs to pull down the notification drawer from the top. On the right side of the notification screen, by clicking the settings icon opens the screen for entering the password. Here the attacker enters the copied characters and keeps on pasting them till the time it no longer accepts any characters at which point the lock screen crashes and exposes the entire camera screen which also crashes after a short while. This exposes the home screen of the phone which the hackers can exploit.