Some Extra Features of Smart Phones may offer backdoors to hackers

Published:2011/12/5 1:15:00 Author:Li xiao na From:SeekIC

Some extra features of as-delivered Android smartphone may provide the backdoor for hackers. The related researches have been taken by the North Carolina State University. In order to make the smartphones more user-friendly, some of these pre-loaded applications or features are added. Some of the features are able to notify you of missed calls or text messages.

However, the potential backdoors are opened by these pre-loaded apps which are built on top of the existing Android architecture. The backdoors can offer third-parties direct access to personal information or other phone features. The North Carolina State University has tested eight models, including two reference implementations that only had Google’s baseline Android software. Google’s reference implementations and the Motorola Droid have no problems. The other five models, namely HTC’s Legend, EVO 4G and Wildfire S, Motorola’s Droid X and Samsung’s Epic 4G, all have shortcomings.

With these backdoors, the phone calls can be recorded, texts can be sent to premium rate numbers, or personal phone settings can be wiped. If you have one of the above phones, you should accept security updates from your vendor and not install any apps that you do not trust completely. The other smartphone models also will be tested in the following days.

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