Massive Security Vulnerability In HTC Android Devices (EVO 3D, 4G, Thunderbolt, Others) Exposes Phone Numbers, GPS, SMS, Emails Addresses, Much More

FYI

On Sun, 02 Oct 2011 13:00:22 GMT
In Massive Security Vulnerability In HTC Android Devices (EVO 3D, 4G, Thunderbolt, Others) Exposes Phone Numbers, GPS, SMS, Emails Addresses, Much More
At http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/10/01/massive-security-vulnerability-in-htc-android-devices-evo-3d-4g-thunderbolt-others-exposes-phone-numbers-gps-sms-emails-addresses-much-more/

The Vulnerability

In recent updates to some of its devices, HTC introduces a suite of logging tools that collected information. Lots of information. LOTS. Whatever the reason was, whether for better understanding problems on users' devices, easier remote analysis, corporate evilness - it doesn't matter. If you, as a company, plant these information collectors on a device, you better be DAMN sure the information they collect is secured and only available to privileged services or the user, after opting in.

That is not the case. What Trevor found is only the tip of the iceberg - we are all still digging deeper - but currently any app on affected devices that requests a single android.permission.INTERNET (which is normal for any app that connects to the web or shows ads) can get its hands on:
the list of user accounts, including email addresses and sync status for each
last known network and GPS locations and a limited previous history of locations
phone numbers from the phone log
SMS data, including phone numbers and encoded text (not sure yet if it's possible to decode it, but very likely)
system logs (both kernel/dmesg and app/logcat), which includes everything your running apps do and is likely to include email addresses, phone numbers, and other private info

-- 
Karl Dubost - http://dev.opera.com/
Developer Relations & Tools, Opera Software

Received on Sunday, 2 October 2011 13:03:38 UTC