“Modern operating systems ‘sandbox’ apps so that they can’t affect each other — in theory,” Paul Wagenseil reports for Tom’s Guide. “Yet three researchers have shown that, at least in Android, one app can ‘spy”‘ upon another and then, at just the right moment, interfere with the targeted app’s user display in order to steal passwords, credit-card numbers or even sensitive photos.”
“In this way, the researchers were able to steal login credentials from the Gmail app, a Social Security number from the H&R Block app, a credit-card number from the NewEgg app and a bank-check image from the Chase app,” Wagenseil reports. “The three researchers — Qian and Qi Alfred Chen and Z. Morley Mao of the University of Michigan — plan to present their findings at the USENIX Security Symposium in San Diego tomorrow (Aug. 22), and have already shared their findings in a research paper entitled ‘Peeking into Your App Without Actually Seeing It: UI State Inference and Novel Android Attacks.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Android. Open – as in, bend over and open wide!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “MotivDev” for the heads up.]
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