Gov’t officials & security experts attempt to crack LoJack anti-theft app on Samsung Galaxy S4

Last month, three days before Apple, Google and other technology companies were scheduled to meet government officials for a summit on increasing smartphone crime, Apple announced at its developer conference that iOS 7 would include a brand new theft deterrent feature. At the meeting in June, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon announced the “Our Smartphones Initiative” to bring together police and other government agencies to help tackle the problem. Now, Gascón and New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman are hosting the first meeting of the group and attempting to crack not only Apple’s new “Activation Lock” feature, but also LoJack running on a Samsung Galaxy S4 (via Cnet):

During a meeting today in San Francisco, technical experts – including representatives from the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) – will be given an Apple iPhone 5 with a new anti-theft security feature known as “Activation Lock” enabled and a Samsung Galaxy s4 with a new anti-theft security feature known as “Lojack for Android” enabled.  The smartphones will be treated as if they were stolen by thieves, and attempts will be made to circumvent the anti-theft features.

The results of the attempt to crack the Apple and Samsung secuirty features should be published later today. We’ll update here when they are available.