Android Phone Tips And Tutorial

To all the Angry Birds fans playing the extremely popular game on your Android phone, beware of any Angry Birdsapplication add-ons. Google has removed at least 10 apps from the Android Market which contain malicious code. The malware was found in apps pretending to be cheats or add-ons for Angry Birds.

The problem with Android apps, unlike with iPhone apps, is that the Android Market doesn’t vet its apps. Xuxian Jiang, an assistant professor of computer science at North Carolina State University, found the malicious apps last week. Some of those apps were infected with the spyware program Plankton. Webroot analysts Andrew Brandt and Amanda Orozco found Plankton was zeroing in on Angry Birds. 

Some of the apps in question were Angry Birds Rio Unlocker v1.0, Angry Birds Multi User v1.00 and Angry Birds Cheater Trainer Helper V2.0. The apps actually install additional code onto your phone which gives remote access and control of the handset to whoever created the malicious apps. Back in March, Google removed about 60 apps from the Android Market for malware concerns. 

If the token is used in requests sent over unencrypted networks, such as WiFi networks, hackers can steal it. The hackers will gain full access to the victim's calendar, contacts information, or private Web-based photo albums. Google's patch forces an HTTPS connection for calendar and contacts sync on Android, Sarafa said. 

Authentication tokens are widely used for online services such as eBay. There was a problem with the authentication token on Android because Google's implementation was faulty, Paul Laudanski, director of ESET's cyber threat analysis center, told LinuxInsider.

"The entry point is having an unpatched or vulnerable Android system connecting to Google services using ClientAuth over an unencrypted public WiFi network," Laudanski explained. Google services transmit the authorization token as an open text message, which can be easily stolen.

Android smartphone owners should stay away from heavily used public WiFi hotspots, Paquette warned. Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer for Unix and Windows. UDP, the User Datagram Protocol, is one of the core members of the Internet Protocol (IP) Suite. The team found that Google doesn't encrypt traffic to Google Calendar, although it properly encrypts traffic to Gmail and Google Voice. 

A few days ago researchers at Ulm University in Germany found that it was “quite easy” for hackers to intercept data from Google’s photo-sharing, calendar and contacts applications, as well as potentially other Google services including Gmail, and already Google says it has “fixed” the problem. 

The flaw worked by allowing unsecured wireless access points that imitate public Wi-Fi hot spots that the phone has accessed before to capture an authentication token. That token could then be used by attackers to access and modify personal data in calendar and contacts, as well as Google photo site Picasa. The problem may be short-lived, however for Google says the security flaw has been fixed in Android’s 2.3.4 version.

FORMER CEO Eric Schmidt has said that Google is will improve the security and privacy of Android devices by simplifying how its users define their sharing settings. According to the BBC, Schmidt, speaking at a UK conference on privacy, said that Google will simplify the app installation process and make it much clearer when and if users are expected to share their sensitive data. "It is worth stressing that we can only do this with data you have shared with Google. 

By. Android Phone Tips

The Google Docs app for Android allows users to create new documents and spreadsheets, which can then be shared with their contacts available on the phone. This feature makes use of Google’s Optical Character Recognition technology. Recently, Google has released a native Android application for their Docs service. Google Docs now allows you to upload folders. Vouchers, passport, itinerary, upload all documents deemed useful to you. After all documents have been scanned save them to your newly created folder.

 

The wait for the new Google Android mobile operating system is over, and the long-awaited system - Honeycomb - is now here and available for phone and tablet users.

The Motorola Xoom tablet uses Honeycomb and garnered a ton of buzz at the recent Consumer Electronics Show. Maps, too, are rendered larger for tablets.

"Google Body," called the Google Maps of yourself, gives you a tablet-sized, 3-D tour of your body. Prices and release dates for Honeycomb enabled devices are still unannounced.

Software Developer Google has started pushing Android 2.2.2 out over the air to Nexus One owners in the UK. News of Google's update appeared last week, however Brits had to wait until yesterday to get the relatively small Android 2.2.2 update for their Nexus One handsets. Nexus One owners are still awaiting an update to Android 2.3, which Google has promised will be arriving in the "coming weeks".

The 558KB update, which is installed on a Google Nexus One in about a minute (less massive than a big update from Android 2.1 to 2.2, for example), will not excite users like the big update to Gingerbread that Google has promised since launching the Nexus S last month with the new OS.

By. Androidguys