New research shows potential for attack in more than 94% of popular Android mobile applications

Dubai, United Arab Emirates, - Tuesday, August 19th 2014 [ME NewsWire]

Palo Alto Networks® (NYSE: PANW), the leader in enterprise security, today presented new research highlighting security risks in the internal storage used by applications on Google Android devices. More than 94 percent of popular Android applications used in the Middle East & Africa are potentially vulnerable.

Android Internal Storage is a protected area that Android-based applications use to store private information, including usernames and passwords. But as Palo Alto Networks research reveals, an attacker may be able to steal sensitive information from most of the applications on an Android device using the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) backup/restore function. In addition, most of the security enhancements added by Google to prevent this type of attack can be bypassed.

Key Details:

    In the Middle East & Africa, Android has the largest market share of all platforms, at 40 percent.
    Anyone using a device running version 4.0 of Android – about 85 percent of Android systems in use today in the Middle East – is potentially vulnerable
    Of the estimated 525.8 million mobile phone owners is the Middle East and Africa, this equates to over 178 million phones at risk in the Middle East and Africa.
    Over 94 percent of popular Android applications, including pre-installed email and browser applications, use the backup system, meaning users are vulnerable
    Many Android applications will store user passwords in plain text in Android Internal Storage, meaning almost all popular e-mail clients, FTP clients and SSH client applications are vulnerable

Quote

    “We encourage users to be aware and Google to take a closer look at this storage weakness in Android. Given Android’s place as the region’s most popular mobile operating system, millions of users are potentially at risk here in the Middle East and Africa.” – Saeed Agha, General Manager - Middle East, Palo Alto Networks.

Palo Alto Networks recommends Android users disable USB debugging when not needed, and application developers to protect Android users by setting android:allowBackup to false in each Android application’s AndroidManifest.xml file or restricting backups from including sensitive information using a BackupAgent.

Download the complete release, full technical details and images:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B176X1Rq94euUjZCNFlNTkpCak0&usp=sharing

Contacts

Nick Leighton & Anu Bhatnagar                  

NettResults Middle East Public Relations for Palo Alto Networks                                      

+9714-409-6719                                                                                                                    

nick.leighton@nettresults.com & anu.bhatnagar@nettresults.com

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