Android owners ought to be angrier than birds! A fake level for the ever-popular mobile game Angry Birds was released on the Android Market, and it exposes serious vulnerabilities in the mobile Google operating system.
Lucky for those duped, however, no Androids were harmed - it was only a demo created by Jon Oberheide, the chief technical officer of security company Scio Security.
Oberheide put up antrojan that disguised itself as an official Angry Birds app, andwas able to bypass Android security measures once installed. Google has since pulled it from the Market.
It's not the first time Android's security has come into question. Reports on the subject have found numerous apps, downloaded thousands of times, that hide their intentions and grab personal data without the phone owner's knowledge.
The main issue to take away from the Angry Birds incident is the failed acceptance procedure in the Android Market. Because of its malicious code and deceptive description, the test-case app should never have even made it live on the digital storefront.
So, before you start downloading a bunch of cool game add-ons that sound too good to be true, do your research, because it very well might be.
[Source:Examiner]
Nov 17, 2010
