Practical Mobile Forensics - Fourth Edition

Crashing the lock screen UI in Android 5.x

On devices running Android 5.0 to 5.1.1, the password lock screen (not the PIN or pattern locks) can be bypassed by crashing the screen UI. This can be accomplished by performing the following steps, as explained at https://android.gadgethacks.com/:

1. Click on the Emergency Call option on the lock screen and then enter any random input (for example, 10 asterisks) on the dialer screen.
2. Double-tap the field to highlight the entered text, as shown in the following screenshot, and select Copy. Now, paste it into the same field:

Crashing lock screen UI

3. Repeat this process to add more characters. Do this ...