Security Roundup: Weaknesses in Android, Windows and iOS allow Gmail to be hacked

We roundup the latest security news, including how researchers have found a way to hack Gmail with a 92 per cent success rate.

Researchers at the University of California Riverside Bourns College of Engineering and the University of Michigan have identified a weakness in Android, Windows, and iOS mobile operating systems that could be used to obtain personal information.

The researchers found that some malicious apps can access the shared memory on mobile devices and potentially pull information from other apps such as Gmail. As they monitored the activity, the researchers found they could hack apps with an 82 to 92 per cent success rate.

Kaspersky has found that the connected home is also under threat from hackers.

Security Analyst David Jacoby conducted research in his own living room and found 14 vulnerabilities in two NAS models, one vulnerability in a Smart TV, and several potentially hidden remote control functions in a router.

The most severe vulnerabilities were found in the NAS models. Several of them would allow an attacker to remotely execute system commands with the highest administrative privileges. The tested devices also had weak default passwords, lots of configuration files had the wrong permissions and they also contained passwords in plain text. In particular, the default administrator password for one of the devices contained just one digit. Another device even shared the entire configuration file with encrypted passwords to everyone on the network.

In other news, Bitdefender has announced that its Mobile Security & Antivirus software now incorporates smartwatches.

“Bitdefender examines user security from all possible angles to ensure total protection, all of the time,” states Catalin Cosoi, chief security strategist at Bitdefender.

“The incorporation of smart wearables into the Bitdefender Mobile Security & Antivirus offering adds a new facet to security – a highly portable, always-ready layer of defence to definitively eliminate phone theft and loss.”