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Abstract: Although the powerful functions of smartphones provide much convenience for users, it causes a great damage because of loss and theft. Therefore the user has to use the phone lock provided by the smartphone.With the phone lock, the user is able to secure the time for requesting to stop the call service to the mobile telecommunication company and deleting the sensitive information with an anti-theftprogramme. However, the fixed keypad lock can be easily unlocked by brute force attacks and the pattern lock is vulnerable to smudge attacks. In this study, we propose a keypad for making brute force attacks and smudge attacks taking place on smartphones more difficult. The proposed keypad increases the time it takes for brute force attacks and is safe to smudge attacks. The smartphone equipped with the proposed keypad increases the time required for brute force attacks by the finder through formation of random buttons, random button arrangement and display delay time. Consequently, the smartphone owners are able to secure more time to become aware of the loss or theftand take action.
Introduction
A smartphone offers a variety of features such as phone calls, mobile payments, MP3, camera, GPS and Internet. Worldwide smartphone sales surpassed 41 million units in the third quarter of 2009, a 12.8% increase from the third quarter of 2008, according to Gartner, Inc. [1]. Although the powerful functions of smartphones provide much convenience for users, it also causes a great damage because of loss and theft. For example, a lost smartphone could be used for international calls by the smartphone finder and the personal information stored in the smartphone could be exposed to the finder. Therefore the user has to use the phone lock provided by the smartphone. Using the phone lock, the user is able to secure the time for requesting to stop the call service to the mobile telecommunication company and deleting the sensitive information with an anti-theftprogramme.
In case the password of the smartphone lock is set as four digits, the finder is able to release the password through 5000 attempts from 0000 to 9999 on the average. If the time it takes to enter the password is assumed as about 4 seconds, 5.56 hours is enough to find out the...