Data of 100M Android users exposed from faulty cloud storage syncing - SiliconANGLE

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2021-05-24 17:00:09

by Duncan Riley

The data of more than 100 million Android app users has been found exposed because of misconfigurations relating to third-party services.

Detailed May 20 by researchers at Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., the exposure relates to 23 popular apps that put user’s personal data at risk through developer internal resources, such as access to update mechanisms and storage.

The potential breach primarily comes down to the use of real-time database access, a service that allows developers to store data on the cloud. The researchers found that they could recover sensitive information, including email addresses, passwords, private chats, device location, user identifiers and more, all because the apps didn’t secure the access between the app and the cloud database.

One example is an app called Astro Guru, which is described as a popular astrology, horoscope and palmistry app with more than 10 million downloads. The researchers could access personal information, including payment details, because of the unsecured way the data was synced through cloud-based real-time databases.