Researchers have found that a large number of vulnerabilities in major Android smartphones including Motorola, HTC, Samsung and more. The privileges are not proper allowing untrusted apps use your phone data.
Some researchers at North Carolina State University have found a major vulnerability in Android that is allowing untrusted applications to send SMS messages, record phone conversations and wipe your data from your device without even you knowing it. A paper recently published by four researchers, showed that the vulnerability exists in almost all major mobile phones running Android in them.
Android has been in this controversy for a while, for providing less secure operating system for the users. And the above reported vulnerability exists in HTC Legend, EVO 4G, Wildfire, Motorola Droid and Motorola Droid X. Followed by some more devices like Samsung Epic 4G, Google’s very own Nexus One and Nexus S. The researchers also reported that they were surprised to find out that the stock images did not properly enforce the permission-based security model for the file system.
Woodpecker, a software tool that the research team has developed, helped find the capability leaks of the operating system. The software was able to find that sensitive applications and major operating system privileges were left exposed without any special permissions, allowing any malicious code to run and access these information without any issues!
The malicious code can access information like sending SMS messages, access address books, geo-location and record voice calls if needed by the malicious application. Also, since the permissions are easily accessible, the untrusted apps can even wipe-out all your data without your knowledge, putting you in trouble! The research has also found that 11 sensitive information’s privileges were leaked by pre-installed apps.
Remember, the research was conducted only on pre-installed apps and not on other applications that come from the Android market. If the research was conducted on other apps, additional vulnerabilities can be found. iOS and BB have been the most secure Operating System so far. What OS do you use? Android? Then you are sure in trouble!
A YouTube video has been posted on this issue but the researchers. Here’s the video: