@John McLear I realize this post is about a year old. In the wake of Moto X having the skip and many phones getting NFC these days, do you think this is any closer to getting added to AOSP Android? I'm using NFCSecure, which is a standalone app to achieve this, but for obvious reasons it lacks OS coherency and has the general security concerns that come with having a locking mechanism that is not provided by the system.
I've seen feature requests here<http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list?can=1&q=type%3DEnhancement+nfc+unlock&colspec=ID+Type+Status+Owner+Summary+Stars&cells=tiles>, but those requests were just as old as this thread. Given this thread is about the security implications of using NFC to unlock, does anyone have any idea how MotoX achieved this? This has got to be more secure than face-unlock or any of the other methods since it relies on a physically paired nfc tag. Of course I'm sure there are latent issues that apply to the radio waves being used by NFC and the polling times, etc. On Friday, December 28, 2012 9:33:40 AM UTC-5, John McLear wrote: > > Łukasz, > > I'm proposing a patch to the Android OS not an App. > > The link to the URL does provide an App that provides some of the > functionality I'm proposing but it doesn't work well at > all<https://github.com/johnyma22/nfc-phone-unlock/issues> > > > > > On Friday, 21 December 2012 21:07:12 UTC, Łukasz Sanek wrote: >> >> Devil's advocate: under what use case does a user carry around a phone >>> that is powered off (if the battery is not dead)? >>> >> >> Jeff, I think John meant just "screen on". In fact, even this is not >> enough- NFC polling is activated after unlocking the screen. >> >> John, seems like somebody made an app like this: >> http://www.sync-blog.com/sync/2012/02/this-app-can-unlock-your-android-lock-screen-using-nfc-tags.html >> I don't know if it works. >> >> W dniu czwartek, 6 grudnia 2012 17:43:50 UTC+1 użytkownik John McLear >> napisał: >>> >>> I'm proposing a method of unlocking the device by using an NFC >>> transponder. NFC is becoming more widely adopted on handsets and as >>> some NFC transponders have built in security features ergo "unlock >>> with NFC" seems to be an obvious next step. >>> >>> When the Android community talks about "unlocking" a phone is the >>> assumption that this is the user stage of unlock IE what you do when >>> you take the phone out of your pocket each time you use it? >>> >>> NFC fails to read quite frequently so the patch would need to include >>> code to do fallback onto a secondary unlock mechanism IE a pin. My >>> work is partly in the area of improving read reliability so as we move >>> forward this will become less of an issue. Is unlock fallback >>> something that has been considered or is due in a future version? >>> >>> I basically need to make a decision between writing a decent app to or >>> submitting a patch and was hoping the community could advise. >>> >>> Once we have fleshed out some of the security implications I will post >>> on android-contrib. >>> >>> If it helps I can ask some NFC forum advisers to share their thoughts >>> on security on this thread but I feel I should get a general opinion >>> on new unlocking mechanisms from the Android Security community first. >>> >>> Thanks >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> John McLear >>> >>> Originally posted here: >>> >>> https://groups.google.com/group/android-platform/browse_frm/thread/48876689f8814e41/49a8d8658b21fb3d?lnk=gst&q=nfc+unlock#49a8d8658b21fb3d >>> >>> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Security Discussions" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-security-discuss. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
