New bug affects half of Android devices in use – Pplware

Created by Pedro Simões on March 26th, 2015 | Category: Android, Google | 14 comments

The bug discovery on Android, and also on other operating systems is something that has become all too common.

All too often there are news of new vulnerabilities and new problems that put vulnerable equipment.

The latest discovery affects Android and the ability to be installed applications, and these an opportunity to be modified.

This fault has now been announced that affects Android, was discovered by security company Palo Alto, who gave him the name” Android Installer Hijacking “.

Failure was detected in January 2014 and since then the company has been working closely with Google to resolve.

The problem is associated with malicious applications that can change the new application installations, changing fonts and other contents changed to achieve control of the equipment and information about the user.

This capability allows, for example, the user to install any game end with a lantern installed application that have permission to read user data and possibly pass them out of the machine.

It should be noted that the problem manifests itself only in applications that are obtained from stores outside Google’s control, including Amazon or Samsung.

Other information that was passed by the Palo Alto realize that this problem is already solved in newer versions of Android. What is known only versions prior to Android 4.3 have this problem and solve.

The severity of this problem is precisely the number and the versions in which what Android Installer Hijacking manifests. According to Google’s numbers these versions are still present in almost 50% of the devices that are in use.

The fragmentation of Android is again the culprit in this scenario and the end of Google’s support versions prior to Android 4.3 come to give even greater weight to this problem and potential targets.

To help Android users to check if your equipment is exposed to this problem, Palo Alto has created an application that can be used. This can be found in the Play Store.

This is a serious problem and it affects too great a share of Android users to ignore. Even with exclusive shops of external applications to Google, it still represent too great a danger to Android users and their data .
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