Amazon Expands Micropayment System to Android

Amazon announced it will now support its virtual currency on Google Android mobile devices in the US, UK, and Germany. Amazon Coins are a virtual currency introduced by the company in 2013, originally intended for Kindle Fire tablet users to make micropurchases, including applications. Each coin is now worth a penny. The company is reportedly working toward establishing “an end-to-end ecosystem” for developers. Some observers are skeptical about Amazon billing it as a virtual currency since it is linked to a user, unlike Bitcoin, which is anonymous. (SlashDot – 1)(SlashDot – 2)(Tech Crunch)(Amazon.com)

View the original article here

Google Bans Words from Android

A list of 1,400 English-language words are banned from the latest version of the Android operating system. Rather than the Android Google Keyboard automatically completing words such as “geek” or “lovemaking” the system offers no help. The list, dissected by WIRED, includes various euphemisms for the sex act as well as “all seven of George Carlin’s dirty words, a frat party’s worth of homophobia and misogyny, and is peppered with pornographic sub genres and fetishistically obscure medical terms” as well as some words that make no sense to censor, such as “thud”  and “LSAT.” Some drug vocabulary and religious words are banned as are “AMD” and “Garmin.” Adding to the oddity: many Google products, including Chromebook, are missing from the dictionary white list. The filter can be disabled and users can manually add words to the dictionary. (Fox News)(WIRED)
 

View the original article here

Popular Android Applications Contain Security Flaws

Researchers from the University of California, Davis, discovered security flaws in roughly 120,000 free applications for the Android smartphone, including several popular texting, messaging, and microblogging programs. These vulnerabilities could be exploited by malware that could then allow the hackers to access users’ private information or post fraudulent messages using social media. The UC Davis researchers found developers of these applications didn’t secure parts of the code. In the WeChat service, for example, they were able to malicious code to turn off the WeChat background service such that a user would think the service is continuing to work when it is not. They have notified the developers concerning the flaws they found.(EurekAlert)(University of California Davis)

View the original article here

Android vulnerability debugged

ScienceDaily (Apr. 12, 2012) — A group of Italian researchers have discovered and neutralized a serious vulnerability present in all versions of Android, the popular operating system developed by Google specifically for smartphones and tablet computers. The vulnerability could have been easily exploited by malicious software applications, with the effect of making devices based on Google's operating system currently on the market completely unusable. The solution proved to be effective and will be included in a future update.

The work was conducted by researchers working in various Italian universities and research centers: Prof. Alessandro Armando, Head of the "Security & Trust" Research Unit at the Bruno Kessler Foundation in Trento and coordinator of the DIST's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Genoa, prof. Alessio Merlo (Telematic University E-Campus), Prof. Mauro Migliardi (coordinator of the Green Energy Aware Security at the University of Padua) and Luca Verderame (recent graduate in Computer Engineering at the University of Genoa).

The team of researchers promptly reported the vulnerability to Google and to the Android "security team," providing a detailed analysis of related risks. It also designed a solution that was verified by the security team of Android, and that -- given its effectiveness -- will be adopted in a future operating system update.

If it had not been neutralized, the vulnerability discovered by the Italian team would have allowed a malicious application software (malware) to saturate the physical resources of the device, leading to complete blockage of both Android-based smartphones and Tablet computers. An especially insidious problem because this particular application does not require any authorization during installation and would tend to appear harmless to the user.

This research will be published on the proceedings of the "27th IFIP International Information Security and Privacy Conference -- SEC 2012" (Heraklion, Crete, Greece, June 4-6, 2012).

Technical Information

The identified vulnerability is based on a defect in the control of communication between applications and vital components of Android that allows to systematically exhaust the memory resources of the device by the generation of an arbitrarily large number of processes. The fundamental principle of the security of Android is the total separation between the applications (sandboxing) to ensure that each of these cannot affect in any way the operation of the others. The team of Italian researchers showed that this separation is violated in current systems and indicated the solution to be able to restore it.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Fondazione Bruno Kessler, via AlphaGalileo.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

View the original article here