shortcomings, mostly related to piracy, viruses
and the lack of security of data. And now, a new
experiment says that the situation is even worse
than you think.
— even a full reset of data is not a
guarantee that an attacker will not be able to
recover information from your smartphone or
tablet. What is particularly unpleasant, is under
threat of not less than 500 million devices with a
“green robot”.
Researchers at Cambridge University have
discovered a vulnerability mechanism for the
deletion of data when you reset to factory
settings on smartphones on the Android platform.
They bought 21 a used device on eBay (Samsung,
HTC, LG, Motorola) in different years, including
representatives from the Nexus line, each unit has
been reset to its factory state.
The experts succeed in 80% of cases to restore
the data to synchronize the device with your
Google account previous owner — contacts, mail,
apps, and other data appeared again in the
gadgets. In some cases, the recovery procedure
yielded even SMS messages and correspondence
through a third-party messengers, as well as
account recovery Facebook. The disappointing
conclusion of the experts: more than half a billion
devices can’t completely erase your data from the
phone memory and about 630 million do not cope
with memory cards.
Separately, an experiment was performed with
encryption and then resetting gadgets. In this
case, access becomes much more difficult,
however, there is a need to use complex
passwords. In addition, newer smartphones
proved to be more resistant to these
manipulations: “the Reasons for this behavior are
complex. New phones, as a rule, better than the
old ones, and the phones of its own brand Google
is better than OEM. However, producers should try
to work on it, and users should be more careful”.
The experiment was conducted on smartphones
running Android versions 2.3 through 4.3.
Samples with more current systems researchers
at Cambridge University for unknown reasons, did
not check. It is possible that the gap has already
closed in new systems. But do not forget about
the number of devices at older versions and
sluggishness at manufacturers upgrading gadgets
— this security hole is very serious. I hope that
early information about the growth of security in
Android Mobile will be truthful.
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