Viber flaw bypasses lock screen to give full access to Androids
Viber Flaw Bypasses Lock Screen to Give Full Access to Androids.
Lacking the lightning-fast reflexes needed toget past the Samsung Galaxy Note 2's lock screen?
Hampered by pesky morality that forces you
to forego the placing of bogus emergency calls so as to hack iPhone passcodes?
Not that you should want to do any of that, mind you, but just
to pile onto the spate of recently revealed smartphone hijacking methods, a new
flaw in Viber allows hackers to more easily bypass Androids' lock screens than
these previous finger-twisters.
Viber, which boasts over 175 million
worldwide users and by its own account is growing crazy fast, is a smartphone app for Android,
iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Phone and other devices and platforms that lets
users call, text, and send photos for free.
As Softpedia's Eduard Kovacs reports, researchers
at Bkav have identified a security hole in Viber that can be exploited to bypass
Android smartphones' lock screen and gain full access to the device.
Bkav describes the lockscreen bypass as "simple,"
though the steps might slightly differ among different phones.
The exploit steps are shown in four videos (one for each
handset) on the company's site. The Samsung version:
The exploit entails a few
actions on Viber's new-message popups, combined with a few other tricks to gain
full access to the phone.
Mr. Nguyen Minh Duc, Director of Bkav's Security Division, says
the security hole comes out of the weird way in which Viber handles messages:
"The way Viber handles to popup its
messages on smartphones' lock screen is unusual, resulting in its failure to
control programming logic, causing the flaw to appear."
Bkav, which posted a blog about the flaw on Tuesday, says it
told Viber about the flaw last week but hasn't yet gotten a response.
The company suggests that while we wait for Viber to fix the
vulnerability, we should keep our smartphones close and out of the hands of
anybody, be they friend or foe.
And, of course, as go all security patches so goes Viber: make
sure to update the app as soon as a patch is available.
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