Back in the day, stealing smartphones used to be a huge problem. It was a lucrative crime because phones could be easily wiped and factory reset and sold as brand new devices. However in the recent years companies like Apple and Google have introduced security measures where factory resetting a smartphone is harder.
Now if there was ever an argument to pick stock Android over customized versions by OEMs, a new video by RootJunky seems to make a pretty good point. It has been discovered that due to a software flaw found in the Samsung Galaxy Note 5, it has allowed users to bypass the factory reset protection feature. This means that if the thief knows what they are doing, they could swipe your phone and factory reset it like the good old days.
Basically what happens in the video above is that RootJunky inserted an OTG drive into the phone. From there, users can browse and even install files from the drive. Assuming the correct type of app has been chosen, users can even launch the phone’s settings and bypass the need to authenticate themselves to do a factory reset on the phone.
At this point in time it is unclear if only Samsung devices are affected, and if it is all Samsung devices running the same build of Android as the Galaxy Note 5, or if there are more Android phones out there that have the same vulnerability. Either way this is a flaw that definitely needs to be addressed which we hope will be soon.