Mobile security company Bluebox said today that it recently discovered a vulnerability in Android that makes any Android device released in the last four years vulnerable to hackers who can read your data, get your passwords, and control any function of your phone, including sending texts, making phone calls, or turning on the camera.
That’s almost 900 million Android devices globally.
A Trojan application … has the ability to read arbitrary application data on the device (email, SMS messages, documents, etc.), retrieve all stored account & service passwords,” Bluebox CTO Jeff Forristal posted. “It can essentially take over the normal functioning of the phone and control any function.”
Bluebox modifed an Android device manufacturer’s application to obtain access to all permissions on the device.
The vulnerability is due to “discrepancies” in how Android apps are approved and verified, Bluebox says, allowing hackers to tamper with application code without changing the app’s cryptographic signatures. That means that an app — any app — that looks perfectly safe and legitimate to an app store, a device, an engineer, or a user actually could actually have malicious code embedded within it.
