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Massive data stealing vulnerability found in many HTC Android phones

androidpolice.com

1–10 of 48 posts

Re: Massive data stealing vulnerability found in many HTC Android phones

#3

This is the very reason I smashed my iPhone and do not keep a mobile phone on me anymore. Call me paranoid but I'm enjoying life far more without it burning a proverbial hole in my pocket.

It's true that there's always risk involved with advancing technology. Faster, better and more capable phones are better at doing good things for you, but it also makes them more capable of doing bad things to you too.

Re: Massive data stealing vulnerability found in many HTC Android phones

#4
"Vulnerability" is an euphemism, this is a deliberately crafted backdoor.

Perhaps it is a testing/debugging-facility that they forgot to remove from the production build?

That'd be about the only semi-plausible excuse for HTC to come out of this alive (when/if mainstream media decides to jump on this).

Re: Massive data stealing vulnerability found in many HTC Android phones

#5
I can't believe that somebody who is intelligent enough to write this application would miss such an obvious flaw.

I literally can not conceive how it wouldn't have crossed their mind that any local app with network permissions would be able to connect to it.

Were they just being lazy? Or were they forced to do it this way by some ignorant manager? I would love to hear how this happened.

Re: Massive data stealing vulnerability found in many HTC Android phones

#7
This is an awesome reason to root your phone the second you get it. I've done so to both of my Android phones. You know that cyanogenmod is safe from this kind of blatant wiretapping, and on top of that, you don't have to worry about hassling with it when you need to tether, or when you want to install an application that requires root permissions to function well. :)

Re: Massive data stealing vulnerability found in many HTC Android phones

#9

This is the very reason I smashed my iPhone and do not keep a mobile phone on me anymore. Call me paranoid but I'm enjoying life far more without it burning a proverbial hole in my pocket.

The reason you smashed your iPhone is because HTC software has an overly detailed and insecure logging suite?

I call you not overly paranoid, but maybe bizarrely superstitious?

Re: Massive data stealing vulnerability found in many HTC Android phones

#10
post #6

Which is why I am glad I got a firewall on my phone and whitelist selected applications to have internet access.

You should read the article. Apparently any app that you give permission to use the Internet can leak all your data. Are you absolutely positive that every single free app you download is safe?
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