WARNING ANDROID USERS Major app vulnerability found, could effect 99 percent Android smartphones A major app vulnerability has been found which can be effect 99 percent of the Android smartphones on the planet. The issue was unraveled by Bluebox security, which claimed to have found an ‘Android Master Key’ that could allow a hacker to turn any Android app into a malicious zombie. This basically means that an app could allow hackers to capture data and control a device remotely, without the owner and the app developer knowing about it. And the kicker is that, this is not a new vulnerability as Bluebox has discovered that it has existed since Android 1.6 Donut, which is four years old. Jeff Forristal, CTO of Bluebox securities revealed that his company had found a way where in a hacker could possibly load an app with malware and still make it appear to be a legitimate file. This bit is important because verified apps are granted full access by default on the Android system. However, on the bright side apps on the Google Play store are impervious to this problem, so if one sticks to downloading apps from the Play store then one is in the clear. That said, there are a number of third party app stores and users can even download APKs directly off the web and here’s where the danger lies as it is possible for users to download tampered apps. This problem is accentuated more in countries like China where users like to use local app store over the Google Play store and many OEMs like Xiaomi don’t even bundle the Google Play store on the device by default. Bluebox securities claims that it reported the problem to Google way back in February and the issue has already been resolved for the Galaxy S4 and currently Google is taking a look at the Nexus range of hardware.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 08:27:46 +0000