Specialists have discovered a vulnerability that threatens personal data of Android devices’ owners, Financial Times reports with reference to experts, who have revealed the flaw in the software.
The hackers can create fake IDs, which allow them to pretend to be an existing application with good reputation, according to Bluebox Security experts. The stunt gives a lot of downloads and allows getting into the device and obtaining access to the stored data.
“It can be used to take over a specific app or an entire device, what is stored on that computer by the user,” says Jeff Forristal, Bluebox’s chief technology officer and lead researcher. “So online banking is at risk, work email is at risk, it just comes down to what the device is used for.”
According to his estimates, 99% of Android devices were vulnerable, but the company has no evidence that the hackers had taken advantage of it.
Bluebox informed Google about the vulnerability in April. After that, the US-based corporation issued an update for Android. Thus, people who haven’t downloaded the new version of software yet, remain at risk.
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