SonarSnoop attack can steal your smartphone’s unlock patterns

Smartphone unlock patterns can be hacked using SonarSnoop attack

Researchers from Lancaster and Linkoping University have come up with a new attack technique that uses your smartphone’s speaker and microphone to steal unlock patterns from Android devices, reports ZDNet.

Dubbed as ‘SonarSnoop’, this method transforms a smartphone’s speaker and microphone into a sonar and uses sound waves to track a user’s finger position across the screen. In other words, the attack technique depends on the basic echo principle of sonar systems.

For those unaware, Sonar (Sound Navigation and Ranging) uses sound propagation normally in submarines for detecting objects on or under the surface of the water, such as other vessels.

The study has been published in the research paper titled “SonarSnoop: Active Acoustic Side-Channel Attacks” that has detailed testing information of SonarSnoop on a Samsung Galaxy S4 running Android 5.0.1.

How does the SonarSnoop attack work?

SonarSnoop uses FingerIO as the primary source of inspiration and is the malicious version of FingerIO. The attack uses a malicious app on the device that emits sound waves from the phone’s speakers generated at frequencies – 18 KHz to 20 KHz – that are inaudible to the human ear.