Sean McMillan is the one who reported finding the flaw

Mar 6, 2013 09:29 GMT  ·  By

A few days ago, we learned that Terence Eden uncovered a way to bypass the lock screen on Samsung Galaxy Note II phones. However, his attack method has some limitations because there’s only a short timeframe in which the home screen can be accessed.

On the other hand, another expert, Sean McMillan, has found a way to achieve a complete bypass and gain full access to the phone’s features. The attack method uncovered by McMillan works on Samsung Galaxy S III, running Android 4.1.2.

McMillan notes that it might take several attempts for the hack to work, but it appears to be more effective on devices that have auto-rotation enabled.

So far, there’s no word from Samsung regarding these vulnerabilities, despite the fact that Eden mentioned informing the company via several mediums.

Here’s the list of steps to bypass the lock screen on S III, as described by McMillan:

1) On the code entry screen press Emergency Call; 2) Then press Emergency Contacts; 3) Press the Home button once; 4) Just after pressing the Home button press the power button quickly; 5) If successful, pressing the power button again will bring you to the home screen.