Word.ws English Dictionary

smudge attack

Syllables: smudge at·tackUK/smʌdʒ əˈtæk/

smudge attack noun: a method used to crack the password of a touchscreen device by analysing the oily smears left on the device's screen by the user's fingers.

smudge attack: a method used to crack the password of a touchscreen device by analysing the oily smears left on...
Image: Sage Ross, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

smudge attack (plural smudge attacks)

  1. (computer security) A method used to crack the password of a touchscreen device by analysing the oily smears left on the device's screen by the user's fingers.
    • Touch screens are touched, so oily residues, or smudges, remain on the screen as a side effect. Latent smudges may be usable to infer recently and frequently touched areas of the screen – a form of information leakage. This paper explores the feasibility of smudge attacks, where an attacker, by...2010 August 9, Adam J. Aviv, Katherine Gibson, Evan Mossop, Matt Blaze, Jonathan M. Smith, “Smudge Attacks on Smartphone Touch Screens”, in WOOT '10: 4th USENIX Workshop on Offensive Technologies...
    • The OTP [one-time password] mechanism that financial institutions adopted utilizes a one-time password displayed on OTP device, so it is vulnerable to shoulder surfing attacks (SSA) and smudge attacks.2012, Yunlim Ku with Okkyung Choi, Kangseok Kim, Taeshik Shon, Manpyo Hong, Hongjin Yeh, and Jai-Hoon Kim, “Extended OTP Mechanism Based on Graphical Password Method”, in James J[ong Hyuk] Park...

Examples of smudge attack in a sentence

  • This paper explores the feasibility of smudge attacks, where an attacker, by inspection of smudges, attempts to extract sensitive information about recent user input.2010 August 9, Adam J. Aviv, Katherine Gibson, Evan Mossop, Matt Blaze, Jonathan M. Smith, “Smudge Attacks on Smartphone Touch Screens”, in...
  • However, the fixed keypad lock can be easily unlocked by brute force attacks and the pattern lock is vulnerable to smudge attacks.2013, “Information Security”, in Q. Ashton Acton, editor, Issues in Information Science—Information Technology, Systems, and Security...
  • That last scenario may sound like something out of a trashy espionage thriller, but the threat of a "smudge attack" is real enough to warrant serious study.2013 February 22, Alex Wawro, Marco Chiappetta, “Windows 8 picture passwords: Their great untapped potential”, in PC World, San Francisco...

Forms of smudge attack

pluralsmudge attacks

Origin of smudge attack

smudge + attack; coined in 2010 by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Computer and Information Science in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA: see the quotation.

Questions about smudge attack

What does smudge attack mean?
Smudge attack means a method used to crack the password of a touchscreen device by analysing the oily smears left on the device's screen by the user's fingers.
How do you use smudge attack in a sentence?
This paper explores the feasibility of smudge attacks, where an attacker, by inspection of smudges, attempts to extract sensitive information about recent user input.
What part of speech is smudge attack?
Smudge attack is a noun.
How do you pronounce smudge attack?
Smudge attack is pronounced /smʌdʒ əˈtæk/ (UK).
What is the plural of smudge attack?
The plural of smudge attack is smudge attacks.

Words near smudge attack in the dictionary

  1. Smucker
  2. Smuckers
  3. SMUD
  4. Smuda
  5. smudge
  6. smudge attack
  7. smudge attacks
  8. smudge bowl
  9. smudge cell
  10. smudge cells
  11. smudge pot

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: smudge attack (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-smudge attack.ogg.

Cite this entry: “smudge attack.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/smudge_attack. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.