The folks at BGR have discovered that AT&T’s Galaxy S II review unit has a security flaw within its lockscreen. If you use the PIN or Pattern Lock security features to safeguard your personal data, you may run into the issue of letting anyone snooping into your beloved phone. To bypass the PIN or the pattern lock, you will have to lock your Galaxy S II and then wait for the screen to time out (black screen), click on the Power/lock button to wake the phone, you will see the usual ‘Slide to Unlock’ message, unlock it and that is all you have to do!
We do know that the Galaxy S II isn’t even out yet, but, we can also confirm via our test unit, that the issue does indeed exist. Samsung and AT&T have alerted about this security and have issued the following statement:
Samsung and AT&T are aware of the user interface issue on the Galaxy S II with AT&T. Currently, when using a security screen lock on the device, the default setting is for a screen timeout. If a user presses the power button on the device after the timeout period it will always require a password. If a user presses the power button on the phone before the timeout period, the device requests a password – but the password is not actually necessary to unlock it.
Samsung and AT&T are investigating a permanent solution. In the meantime, owners of the Galaxy S II can remedy the situation by re-setting their time-out screen to the “immediately” setting. This is done by going to the Settings->Location and Security->Screen unlock settings->Timeout->Immediately.
Until we see an OTA from Samsung to address this problem, you can simply head to Settings->Location and Security->Screen unlock settings->Timeout->Immediately and that is all for now. Other than that, this phone is just out of this world. We should have review up in the next couple of days.
via BGR
