Google rolls out silent fix for Android security vulnerability

There’s good news for any owners of Android devices worried about the recently announced security vulnerability that could allow allow unauthorised parties to snoop on your Google Calendar and Contacts information.

Google has already started rolling out a fix!

The issue had already been fixed in Android 2.3.4 (codenamed Gingerbread), but as we mentioned earlier this week over 99% of Android users are running earlier versions of the operating system.

Google has started to implement a server-side patch that addresses the issue for all versions of the Android OS. The great news is that it doesn’t require a software update on the Android devices themselves – meaning the fix is automatic and worldwide. Effectively this is a silent fix.

The fix addresses a vulnerability with the use of authTokens for Google’s Calendar and Contacts apps discovered by researchers at Germany’s University of…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.