Android apps may leak personal information, research finds
The new Android, with Ice Cream Sandwich software, was introduced in October as the iPhone 4S’s latest competition.
If you're an Android user, it may be a good idea to stop using mobile banking. According to a study conducted by researchers at Leibniz University in Marburg, almost 8 percent of Android apps can be tricked into revealing personal data.
According to tech blog The Droid Guy, as many as 183 million users are at risk of identity theft because of faulty encryption protections in Google's Play Market.
BBC News reported that the researchers created a fake wi-fi hotspot and created an attack tool to spy on the data that the apps sent through the hotspot.
The researchers explained that using this method they could gather bank account information, payment credentials for PayPal, American Express and others. They were presenting their findings at the Computer and Communications Security Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Personal information stored on Facebook, email and cloud storage could be leaked, access to IP cameras was accesible and the researchers were easily able to disable security programs, and inject computer code that would make the apps carry out specific commands
Most worrisome? An attacker could redirect a request to transfer funds on mobile banking applications without revealing the change to the user.
Google has yet to comment on the paper's findings.
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