Following last week’s release of the Android 8.1 Developer Preview, new functionality is still being uncovered. Yesterday, one possible feature emerged, suggesting that Android was making a critical change to Factory Reset Protection. However, Google has confirmed to us that this is not the case and that a bug is to blame.
Factory Reset Protection was introduced with Android Lollipop, and, like Apple’s iCloud Activation Lock, it’s supposed to make it really hard to resell a stolen Android phone. The gist is that when you use Android recovery menu to reset a phone to factory settings, the phone will require upon reboot that you sign in using a Google account you previously used on the device before resetting it. If someone steals your phone and wipes it, they need your Google account for it to be anything but a brick.
Well, it appears that a flaw in Samsung’s phones lets potential thieves around this security measure, and it looks like the workaround (via RootJunky) takes just about five minutes to pull off…
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