Factory Reset Protection On Stolen Samsung Smartphones Can Be Bypassed In Minutes

If you thought that the Factory Reset Protection option on your stolen Samsung smartphone safeguarded your data, then think again. Thanks to a flaw in Samsung phones, the security feature can be bypassed easily – in a matter of minutes!
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RootJunky, an expert rooter, demonstrated the workaround via a YouTube video, which enables one to bypass the security feature in under 10 minutes.

The YouTube video shows how RootJunky is able to manipulate his way around the Factory Reset Protection feature on a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 smartphone.

For the unfamiliar, the Factory Reset Protection feature was introduced in Android Lollipop to essentially make it impossible for a thief to do a factory reset on a stolen phone. This security measure is said to make the reselling of a stolen smartphone difficult. The security measure is much like the iCloud Activation Lock from Apple.

In the event anyone attempts to conduct a factory reset on a stolen smartphone through the recovery option, the handset becomes inoperable till the owner signs-in to their previously-used Google account on the handset (before the handset was reset) when the device reboots. So while an owner does not require additional steps to factory reset their Samsung smartphone, a thief who will not have any knowledge of the password is unable to do much.

So even though a thief cannot enter a password-protected handset, a vulnerability in Samsung smartphones can allow the security measure to be bypassed. Samsung smartphones basically pull a file manager automatically when one inserts an OTG drive i.e. an external storage device.

The operating system will enable one to open the files. This is a flaw because in theory one should not be able to access anything post the factory reset which can be accessed only post a Google sign-in.

In the video, RootJunky demonstrates how inserting an APK in the OTG drive opens up the settings. The APK then needs to be installed and the PS even enables one to disable the security measure "unknown sources." One will have access to the settings and then pressing a few buttons will do the trick.