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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday June 28 2015, @09:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-only-way-to-be-secure-is-not-to-network dept.

Security researchers of the security group at the Free University of Amsterdam found a hole in Android. The scoop in Dutch - news is 10hrs old at time of writing, I didn't find an English source yet. Heck, the university hasn't even put out a press release, even though this is currently making a splash in the Dutch news.

In short, the researchers hacked the user's (desktop) browser and then installed (via this browser) a malicious app on the phone.This gave them basically full control over the phone: turning camera on/off, replacing installed apps with malicious versions, intercepting text messages, etc. In fact, they used this to reduce a common version of two-factor authentication (know password and have phone) to only one factor: they managed to intercept verification codes (text messages) sent by a bank.

The problem is not in a specific version of Android, but in the deep integration between Google's websites and Android. Google has been made aware of the problems late 2014, but has yet to publicly reply.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Nerdfest on Sunday June 28 2015, @03:16PM

    by Nerdfest (80) on Sunday June 28 2015, @03:16PM (#202430)

    Wouldn't this also expose other services like GMail, Google Drive, Photos, etc as well? I would think those are just as worthy of mentioning as the mobile device install possibility, perhaps more so.

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