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posted by janrinok on Tuesday September 03 2019, @02:16PM   Printer-friendly

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Facebook has insisted that losing control of the private key used to sign its Facebook Basics app is no biggie despite totally unrelated apps from other vendors, signed with the same key, popping up in unofficial repositories.

Targeted mainly at third-world countries, Facebook Basics is the latest incarnation of Internet.org and Free Basics. The idea was to offer free access to Facebook-owned internet properties (and only Facebook-owned ones) with the intention of getting the great unconnected hooked on The Social Network, WhatsApp and Instagram.

So it was that last week the Android Police website, something between an online souk and an occasional tech blog, informed the world that "random APKs" were being uploaded to its Android app mirror site – with Facebook's key signature. The site maintains its own APK repository, parallel to the Google Play store.

"In the last month, we've spotted third-party apps using a debug signing key which matched the key used by Facebook for its Free Basics Android app," wrote Android Police. The site's owner, Artem Russakovskii, said he reported the key compromise to Facebook after spotting unrelated APKs with the same key signature. He also claimed that because he tweeted about it publicly after reporting it, Facebook had refused to pay out a bug bounty.

For its part, Facebook quietly released a new version of Facebook Basics in mid-August, signed with a new key, which at the time of writing has had just over 100,000 downloads.

A Facebook spokesbeing told The Register: "We were notified of a potential security issue that could have tricked people into installing a malicious update to their Free Basics app for Android if they chose to use untrusted sources. We have seen no evidence of abuse and have fixed the issue in the latest release of the app."


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  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday September 04 2019, @03:11PM (1 child)

    by Freeman (732) on Wednesday September 04 2019, @03:11PM (#889556) Journal

    Very interesting, but how that had anything to do with my comment you replied to, I have no idea.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
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  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday September 04 2019, @08:40PM

    by anubi (2828) on Wednesday September 04 2019, @08:40PM (#889682) Journal

    I hit the wrong reply to button.

    Once it was done, I don't know how to undo and do it right.

    This topic does concern me a lot, kinda like it would concern anyone whose aware of the explosive nature of gasoline and doesn't want to see it stored in the switchgear room.

    I've known for a long time the risks of executing arbitrary code. Even something simple as an ANSI text editor. It was a prank. In those days, things were simple enough that something like this ranked right up there with filling a bag with dog poo, setting it on fire on someone's porch, ringing their doorbell, and run.

    Today, it's no joke, but the basic mechanisms of causing mayhem are still in place.

    I tried to stop it. God knows I tried.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]