Millions Of Smartphones At Risk Due To Unsecure Android Apps
A group of researchers at The University of Michigan conduct an extensive analysis to uncover apps that are vulnerable due to open ports.
A recent study conducted by The University of Michigan uncovered hundreds of apps within the Google Play Store are susceptible to hacking via unsecured open ports.
Researchers of the university utilized a tool called "OPAnalyzer" to scan over 100,00 Android applications for a usage and vulnerability analysis.
The results were distressing.
The analysis discovered 410 vulnerable applications with 956 potential exploits in total. If that weren't bad enough, of the confirmed vulnerable apps it was found that some of them were extremely popular with 10 to 50 million downloads on the official market. Some of the apps even come pre-installed on some device models.
Hackers can exploit the open ports in the apps to turn the phone into a "server" and remotely steal contacts, photos, security credentials, and even install malware. Some of the apps affected utilized open ports for the purposes of text messaging, data sharing, Voice over IP calls, remote executions, and file sharing for devices within the same network.
The researches that conducted the study have already notified the app developers whom have acknowledged the vulnerabilities and will hopefully patch these security flaws.
