Database Info

Skype Lockscreen Bypass Bug

Tested with Skype version 3.2.0.6673 (released 1st July 2013) on various
Android devices (Sony Xperia Z, Samsung Galaxy Note 2, Huawei Premia 4G
The Skype for Android application appears to have a bug which permits the
Android inbuilt lockscreen (ie. pattern, PIN, password) to be bypassed
relatively easily, if the device is logged into Skype, and the "attacker"
is able to call the "victim" on Skype.
This can be reproduced as follows with 2 Skype accounts, and 2 separate
devices to use with Skype. The target phone is presumed to have an Android
lockscreen configured and in use, and to be locked during the test.
1. Initiate a Skype call to the target device, which will cause it to
wake, ring, and display a prompt on the screen to answer or reject the call
2. Accept the call from the target device using the green answer button
on the screen
3. End the call from the initiating device (ie. the device used to call
the target phone)
4. The target device will end the call, and should display the
lockscreen.
5. Turn off the screen of the target device using the power key, and
turn it on again
6. The lockscreen will now be bypassed. It will remain bypassed until
the device is rebooted
Similar to (ironically enough):
http://arstechnica.com/security/201...een-lock-on-up-to-100-million-android-phones/.
Seems that internet based calling apps might well be "unlucky".
I suggest logging out of skype when not using it, until there is a fix.
Thanks to Turl for originally bringing this to my attention.

Greetings pulser_g2,
Thanks for posting this. I found that all these screenlock bypass vulns (including yours) won't work if a enterprise policy is enforced on the target device. I've tested with 2 different smartphones, Note 8.0 and Note 2. Both with the current stock firmware. Can you or anyone else confirm this?
Cheers,
Michael

c0rnholio said:
Greetings pulser_g2,
Thanks for posting this. I found that all these screenlock bypass vulns (including yours) won't work if a enterprise policy is enforced on the target device. I've tested with 2 different smartphones, Note 8.0 and Note 2. Both with the current stock firmware. Can you or anyone else confirm this?
Cheers,
Michael
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the tip. However, forcing enterprise policy onto a device that does not need it should not be a solution for a bug like this (not ranting against you, please don't take it that way). Skype was already informed about this a couple of weeks ago and nothing has been done afaik.
I received a Skype update today from the market, so I guess it might be worth checking if the bug can be repeated or if it has been fixed.

Hi egzthunder1,
I don't take your post personal. My post was not made with the intent to be a bugfix. I just want someone else who also has access to provisioned devices to confirm my observation. Additionally if my observation is correct then it should be mentioned in a security advisory that enterprise provisioned devices with an enforced password seem to not be affected by all these lockscreen bypasses. I'm just discussing here

Does andybody know which wrong usage of the Android-API might be used here? I'm developing myself an app which switches the Screen on and shows information without the need to unlock the device. Know I'm concerned that I might use the API wrong, too. There were also such bugs in other apps in the past month, so there must be some wrong usage type. Saidly I didn't find anything about it via googling. If you have links, please share.

SamsungPisser said:
Does andybody know which wrong usage of the Android-API might be used here? I'm developing myself an app which switches the Screen on and shows information without the need to unlock the device. Know I'm concerned that I might use the API wrong, too. There were also such bugs in other apps in the past month, so there must be some wrong usage type. Saidly I didn't find anything about it via googling. If you have links, please share.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It seems to be related to the use of the permission to disable the lockscreen.
I.e. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12021800/disable-delay-android-lock-screen-programmatically
You want to ensure you definitely disable the option once done. I suggest you create a test plan and ensure even if everything goes wrong, the lock will still get enabled again in the end.

c0rnholio said:
Hi egzthunder1,
I don't take your post personal. My post was not made with the intent to be a bugfix. I just want someone else who also has access to provisioned devices to confirm my observation. Additionally if my observation is correct then it should be mentioned in a security advisory that enterprise provisioned devices with an enforced password seem to not be affected by all these lockscreen bypasses. I'm just discussing here
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmmm that is interesting actually.
I need to see if I can replicate this by forcing provisioning manually.
I don't have an exchange server unfortunately (I use my own mail server that uses the protocol but doesn't do the complex provisioning.)
I'll have a look though as I think it supports provisioning in the configuration where it emulates Exchange. I believe this likely is a workaround for enterprise users.
This would be enough motivation actually to look at setting up proper provisioning of my devices.
Thanks for letting me know

[Q] Voice dialing with a PIN lock on Nexus 5

Hi All I have just purchased a new nexus 5 (gear live pre-ordered) in a curious attempt to have a go at android from my Iphone 5c.
I am tweaking the handset at the moment to give me some lost functionality from IOS. I have stumbled across a really painful problem that i can not find a solution to. I use a pair of bose wired earphones to listen to music and use as hands free in the car. On my iphone, I am used to to pushing the mic button and activating the voice dial from the locked screen, all good.
When i try doing this on my nexus, i get the "can not use OK Google until the phone is unlocked" message in my ear.
I have to have a passlock on the handset due to work security restrictions.
Does anyone have a work around for this? I am hoping my new gear live will keep the pass lock when in close proximity (A major flaw otherwise - unlocking your phone before you can see anything on your smartwatch!) in the interim though, putting a pass key in the phone every time i want to make a call whilst riving is pretty poor!
currently on stock 4.4.4. not rooted yet -
Thanks all

randomtechgeek said:
Hi All I have just purchased a new nexus 5 (gear live pre-ordered) in a curious attempt to have a go at android from my Iphone 5c.
I am tweaking the handset at the moment to give me some lost functionality from IOS. I have stumbled across a really painful problem that i can not find a solution to. I use a pair of bose wired earphones to listen to music and use as hands free in the car. On my iphone, I am used to to pushing the mic button and activating the voice dial from the locked screen, all good.
When i try doing this on my nexus, i get the "can not use OK Google until the phone is unlocked" message in my ear.
I have to have a passlock on the handset due to work security restrictions.
Does anyone have a work around for this? I am hoping my new gear live will keep the pass lock when in close proximity (A major flaw otherwise - unlocking your phone before you can see anything on your smartwatch!) in the interim though, putting a pass key in the phone every time i want to make a call whilst riving is pretty poor!
currently on stock 4.4.4. not rooted yet -
Thanks all
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll be honest and say that being able to make a call with the phone being pin locked would be a security risk. Now as for a workaround I can only think of one thing that would work but it requires some time to configure things correctly.
You could us ethe app tasker to automate this. You can set a profile for when you are in your car. When you are driving in the car (e.g. moving over 10 MPH) you can have tasker turn off your PIN Lock. Then when you get out of your car (eg not moving) it would reenable your PIN lock.
If that's too hard to configure (I can show you if you are interested in the above method) You can just set up a much simpler profile in tasker that whenever your BT headset is connected disable your PIN lock. THough this is less secure.
Those are the only options I can think of and honestly I would be surprised if anyone came up with a true solution to this

Replaced battery in my N5 - now no trusted face or trusted locations

This seems very strange. my N5, stock and unrooted (5.01) battery was getting bad so I replaced it with a unit from ebay. It looked like a genuine OEM battery but I suspect it wasn't.
And despite all the videos on Youtube etc. saying you can prise the back off the N5 without breaking anything I managed to break two tabs
Anyway after I put it all back my first heartstopping moment was NFC had stopped working, both for charging and for communications. A quick Google search revealed that was because the back had not snapped on properly so the antenna in the back was not contacting the motherboard contacts properly. A quick press of the back the case, a click and all was well,
But now the phone won't do trusted face or locations which it did before. If I go to trusted face and choose improve face matching I receive an error Couldn't start finding your face. And now face unlock never works as well as trusted location (my home).
I can't believe a new battery would affect that but perhaps somebody in these forums might have some knowledge of this problem?
I will wait for 5.1 to see if it fixes the problem, else I guess I have to live with it.
Thanks

Sounds like maybe the front facing camera connection might have been disturbed during battery installation.
If it was me, I'd go into the camera app and see if the front facing camera is working properly.
If not, pull the back off again and check around the camera for anything loose. Verify your antenna connections.
Best of Luck

That one of the first things I tried and the camera is fine. Also GPS works fine so trusted location should work.

lchiu7 said:
That one of the first things I tried and the camera is fine. Also GPS works fine so trusted location should work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As you mentioned, waiting for the 5.1 OTA is going the be the best option short of factory resetting and losing all your data.
Hopefully the OTA will fix it for you when it arrives to your device.
If you prefer not to wait on Google, you could Download the 5.1 OTA and ADB sideload it using the STOCK recovery.
Nexus 5 OTA Help-Desk
Looks like you would need to follow :
Scenario #1
You are completely stock. Unlocked or Locked bootloader. No root permissions.
Continue to Section A
Best of luck

The problem is not from your battery.
Trusted places and faces are broken after the last Google Play update on a number of Nexus devices after they added the "on-body detection."
Some users get it to work, some temporarily, but it is not an issue with your new battery. From the forums i read, some users (not Nexus 5 ) got it to work by turning smart lock off and on, re-doing your locations in google maps, side loading the Google Play Services apk, uninstalling the Google Play Services and reverting it to previous version (mine is grayed out.)
I notice huge battery drain coming from the Google Play Services then I disconnected the GPS and it was no longer draining. I am assuming it's having trouble or a bug where it's searching my location for the Trusted places and draining my battery. This is only an assumption though. Hopefully it will be fixed in a future update. I still have not found a fix for my N5 or N7 2013 yet.

Just so others are not put off ive changed my Battery with no issues and have taken the back off 6 times. No clips broke. It is important to make sure all clips are pushed home and you should gently press the back allover as there are a lot of connections on the back that need to make contacts with the board

joegestes said:
As you mentioned, waiting for the 5.1 OTA is going the be the best option short of factory resetting and losing all your data.
Hopefully the OTA will fix it for you when it arrives to your device.
If you prefer not to wait on Google, you could Download the 5.1 OTA and ADB sideload it using the STOCK recovery.
Nexus 5 OTA Help-Desk
Looks like you would need to follow :
Scenario #1
You are completely stock. Unlocked or Locked bootloader. No root permissions.
Continue to Section A
Best of luck
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I got the OTA update for 5.1 and it's made no difference. Might have to look at some other solutions.

chrisinsocalif said:
The problem is not from your battery.
Trusted places and faces are broken after the last Google Play update on a number of Nexus devices after they added the "on-body detection."
Some users get it to work, some temporarily, but it is not an issue with your new battery. From the forums i read, some users (not Nexus 5 ) got it to work by turning smart lock off and on, re-doing your locations in google maps, side loading the Google Play Services apk, uninstalling the Google Play Services and reverting it to previous version (mine is grayed out.)
I notice huge battery drain coming from the Google Play Services then I disconnected the GPS and it was no longer draining. I am assuming it's having trouble or a bug where it's searching my location for the Trusted places and draining my battery. This is only an assumption though. Hopefully it will be fixed in a future update. I still have not found a fix for my N5 or N7 2013 yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure if that applies to me. I had the problem after I replaced the battery (though it could be coincidental) but before 5.1 where I understand is when on-body detection was first implemented.
I managed to get trusted places to work by walking around my section and getting the phone to recognise a new location which is basically the same as my home but with a different name. That seems to work but I still cannot get face detection, either with unlock or improve matching.

I found the reason for my large battery drain, it was one of my weather apps refreshing through Google play Services. I also did a temp fix for Trust Places like the other user did. I added two places next to my house, close enough to all cross each other. That did the trick for now.

Here's what worked for me
I got a phone call when my Nexus 5 was locked and instantly Trusted Face crashed and gave me a force close message. Here's how I managed to fix it:
1) First, I removed the existing face data and turned off Trusted Face.
2) From Settings --> Apps --> All, I found Trusted Face and Cleared Cache, Data, Force Stopped the app and then disabled & enabled the app.
3) Rebooted the phone holding the power button (Not through the menu)
4) Turned on Trusted Face and registered my face.
5) Then I had coffee, but that's not relevant to the case.
Note: I know some of the above steps are unnecessary and repetitive, but nothing else worked for me.
Good Luck !

Thanks. I tried that and now Trusted Face is working again.

PHP:
lchiu7 said:
Thanks. I tried that and now Trusted Face is working again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm glad it worked.

smart lock not working

I want to use okay google in my car to change music but it rails due to the fact the device is locked. I have added several trusten bluetooth devices (removed them and re-added too) and trusten voice enabled but still the device remains locked. I am using the fingerprint scanner to unlock.
How can I start using okay google again?

anyone?

Is this place still alive?

Is there actually anyone reading this forum?

godutch said:
Is there actually anyone reading this forum?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LOL, for me trusted bluetooth devices is working. The fingerprint is not needed.... Did you try another bluetooth device?
The first time I used this feature with my car audio, it said the my phone has to be at least unlocked once with fingerprint because the bluetooth device has no high security standard.. but now it is working fine...
do other smart lock features work? Like trusted places?
BUT, what you can try, goto SETTINGS->Lock Screen->other security settings->Trusted agents
play around with this smartlock (google), enable disalbe again. I had prolbems with trusted places and this helped for me....

GZA1337 said:
LOL, for me trusted bluetooth devices is working. The fingerprint is not needed.... Did you try another bluetooth device?
The first time I used this feature with my car audio, it said the my phone has to be at least unlocked once with fingerprint because the bluetooth device has no high security standard.. but now it is working fine...
do other smart lock features work? Like trusted places?
BUT, what you can try, goto SETTINGS->Lock Screen->other security settings->Trusted agents
play around with this smartlock (google), enable disalbe again. I had prolbems with trusted places and this helped for me....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i tried and nothing is working.... ( and I tried it with 2 different s6's)

Fingerprint unlock disabled when work profile is active

Hi all, delighted by my brand new device (exynos) but a strange behaviour occured when I installed my company MDM.
Impossible to unlock with the fingerprint, in the settings the biometrics section is greyed out.
It was working fine before. As soon as I removed the professional profile, it worked again, and as soon as I set it up again, it didn't.
Strangely enough, the MDM allows the fingerprint to log into the professional apps (like Boxer).
Anyone here uses a company profile with the S10e ?
Sounds like a bug or a company restriction? It worked fine before with my old MotoG5+ with an outdated security patch, and my colleagues with other types of Galaxy phones don't have this issue.
Thanks for any thought.

I use work mode and Microsoft InTune. The fingerprint sensor works normally. The sensor itself is a bit annoying but the operation is as intended.
The fingerprint settings have an option for fingerprint always on.

Same thing happened to me. My company uses VMware Intelligent HUB in a work profile. After installing it, could no longer unlock with fingerprint. Options are grayed out in security settings. Uninstalled the work profile and I get fingerprint unlock back. Since the only thing I needed was email, I'm just using the web interface in chrome (how is that more secure???). It all worked fine on my pixel 2, so this is specific to s10e. I refuse to install the work profile if it disables the fingerprint unlock. Emailed my IT department to see if they can change the policy, but not hopeful about that.