Some smartphones using the Android mobile platform are particularly susceptible to hackers, U.S. researchers say.
Xuxian Jiang, who is an assistant professor of computer science at North Carolina State, said that certain pre-loaded applications are built on top of the existing Android architecture in a particular way that actually creates potential backdoors that can be used to give third-parties direct access to personal information or other phone features.
The researchers tested eight different smartphone models. Two were “reference implementations” that were loaded only with Google's baseline Android software.
"Google's reference implementations and the Motorola Droid were basically clean," says Jiang. "No real problems there."
HTC's Legend, EVO 4G and Wildfire S, Motorola's Droid X and Samsung's Epic 4G all had significant vulnerabilities, Jiang said.
The researchers, however, said they made sure to notify those manufacturers of the vulnerabilities as soon as they were discovered.
"If you have one of these phones, your best bet to protect yourself moving forward is to make sure you accept security updates from your vendor," UPI.com quoted Jiang as saying Wednesday in a release. "And avoid installing any apps that you don't trust completely."
Supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Army Research Office, the research, is going to be presented in February at a conference in San Diego.
