Update Your Skype for Android App to Protect Data

Skype has released a new version of Skype for Android that resolves the configuration issues that larboard sensitive information exposed on Android smartphones. You should update Skype for Android to the current version as soon as possible to micturate trustworthy your data is protected.

Last workweek researchers at the Android Police discovered that the Skype for Android app liberal tender data on the smartphone exposed for easy access. A proof of concept app called Skypwned demonstrates how oblanceolate it is to take out one-on-one information from the hole left by Skype without requiring some additive username, password, or permissions.

Android caution sign — A new version of Skype for Android is available that fixes the information exposure blemish.

Gunter Ollmann, vice prexy of research for Damballa, explains that the Skype for Android app fails to carry out any encoding or file security to protect the data stored on the smartphone. It is not a vulnerability per se, merely rather a form error that doesn't cling to established security primo practices. Skype dropped the musket ball.

Ollmann went connected to clarify, though, that this problem is not necessarily unique to Skype. "Many applications on Android (and Android is non unique) fail to adequately store personal data gone. Ideally file permissions should be used to protect information stored happening the device from organism accessed away other "unauthorised" applications."

Armando Orozco, Webroot threat analyst, agrees, "I'm sure there are a set of developers reviewing their computer code after this news. This likely isn't unusual to Skype; it's meet the primary big name to be found with the vulnerability."

Encoding of stored data is also highly recommended. However, Ollman says that the heavy mathematics processing participating in encrypting and decrypting information taxes the smartphone and can seriously impact electric battery animation and performance. App developers wealthy person to strike a balance that secures sensitive information without adversely affecting the smartphone experience to the point that users only won't use the app.

In a blog post announcing the availability of the updated app, Skype stresses that information technology takes privacy seriously and apologizes once again for allowing information to personify exposed. The good news, reported to Skype, is that at that place are no reports of third-company malicious apps exploiting the hole leftmost by Skype. Course, it is completely possible that it has happened, Oregon is happening honorable now, and it just hasn't been discovered yet.

Skype cautions users to only download the Skype for Android app directly from skype.com or the prescribed Google Android Market to avoid any attempts to take advantage connected the attention to fox users into downloading a rogue malicious Trojan interlingual rendition to "fix" the problem.