How you hold your phone can get you hacked

Motion sensors common on smartphones can help hackers steal users' passwords.

Researchers at Newcastle University (UK) analyzed the movement of the phone while the user was typing. By calculating the tilt and displacement of the device, the team guessed the 4-digit password correctly on the first try with 70% accuracy. This rate increased to 100% on the fifth guess.

A team of experts demoed exploiting a vulnerability on the phone to collect data from sensors.

"Most phones, tablets and wearables are equipped with many sensors, from GPS, cameras, microphones to gyroscopes, proximity sensors, accelerometers...", Dr."Apps and websites don't need to ask for user permission to access these sensors, so malicious programs can be written to intercept sensor data, which can then collect and determine the behavior of phone users, such as call duration, tapping habits and operations on the touch screen, and the movement of the device when entering PINs, passwords, etc.", said Maryam Mehrnezhad, the lead researcher.

Manufacturers are aware of this problem, but have not yet been able to find a common solution to manage the different types of sensors on the market.

According to VNE