Hundreds of Millions of Android Operated Mobile Devices All in Danger of Hacking
According to a new study from the University of Cambridge, countless Android system operated devices are vulnerable to hacking because of the rest performed at the factories. More than 600 million devices are at risk.
The study conducted by Laurent Simon and Ross Anderson reviewed second hand Android devices which run its 2.3 to 4.3 systems. They discovered that even after resetting, the devices preserved some of the information previously stored on them, such as texts, images and data from apps.
“After the reboot, the phone successfully re-synchronized contacts, emails, and so on, ” states the report.
“We recovered Google tokens in all devices with flawed Factory Reset, and the master token 80 percent of the time. Tokens for other apps such as Facebook can be recovered similarly. We stress that we have never attempted to use those tokens to access anyone’s account.”
[Read the full research report here.]
Read more about: Android, Android system, Computer architecture, computing, Embedded Linux, Facebook Inc, Factory Reset, Free software, Google Inc, Laurent Simon, Ross Anderson, Smartphones, software, Technology/Internet, the master token 80 percent, Token coin, Tokens, University of Cambridge