You secure your smart phone with a passcode that you must enter before it springs to life. But how much protection will this passcode actually offer? The troubling answer? Not nearly enough, according to a recently available story by the tech Web site Lifehacker. The story details several passcode exploits that hackers have used recently to compromise smart phones. Fortunately, the story does something a lot more comforting, too. It tells users the best way to protect the data on their smart phones.
Passcode problems
The Lifehacker story examines recent passcode exploits targeting the Samsung Galaxy and iPhone smart phones. Based on the story, the attack on the iPhone allowed hackers to, using the phone app, make phone calls, view photos and modify the contact lists of users. Hackers couldn’t gain full access to the phone, nevertheless they gained enough capability to cause plenty of problems for owners. The Samsung exploit worked differently. Hackers were able to flash the phone’s home screen for about a second. This gave hackers enough time to either launch apps on the phone or start downloading a more dangerous app that enables hackers to get full control over the device.
No magic bullet
The Lifehacker story proves that passcodes are far from a magic bullet for stopping smart phone hackers. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. As the Lifehacker story says, passcodes have never been more powerful than standard passwords when it comes to protecting smart phones. Hackers have long been able to crack lock-screen passcodes. They’ve also been able to get into the hard drives of smart phones to gain access to the data and information stored there.
Protection
To protect yourself, first be sure that your lock-screen passcode is at least difficult to guess. Lifehacker recommends a passcode consisting of letters, symbols and numbers. Next, always encrypt the data that you store on your smart phone. Last but not least, consider paying for services such as Prey or Apple’s Find my iPhone. These types of services give you the ability to track your phone after it’s stolen or you lose it. Better yet, it allows you to eliminate the data stored on it, so that hackers can’t reach it.