Practical Mobile Forensics - Fourth Edition

Secure USB debugging bypass in Android 4.4.2

As explained in earlier sections, the secure USB debugging feature introduced in Android 4.4.2 allows only authorized workstations to connect to the device; however, there's a bug in this feature, as reported at https://labs.mwrinfosecurity.com/, which allows a user to bypass the Secure USB debugging feature and connect the device to any workstation. Here are the steps to follow to bypass Secure USB debugging on an Android device:

1. On an unlocked device, attempt to use adb. An error message will be shown by the device.
2. Now, navigate to either the emergency dialer or the lock-screen camera and execute the following commands:

$ adb kill-server
$ adb shell  

3. The confirmation dialog will be triggered ...