It wasn’t a good weekend for HTC, as it was revealed that the company had a massive security vulnerability in a few of its phones. Some of the flaws allows any app requesting internet access to take a peek at a user account information, GPS location, system logs, and other potentially private data. Well, the manufacturer was quick to punch today, addressing all of its users, HTC released this public statement:
HTC takes claims related to the security of our products very seriously. In our ongoing investigation into this recent claim, we have concluded that while this HTC software itself does no harm to customers’ data, there is a vulnerability that could potentially be exploited by a malicious third-party application. A third party malware app exploiting this or any other vulnerability would potentially be acting in violation of civil and criminal laws. So far, we have not learned of any customers being affected in this way and would like to prevent it by making sure all customers are aware of this potential vulnerability.
HTC is working very diligently to quickly release a security update that will resolve the issue on affected devices. Following a short testing period by our carrier partners, the patch will be sent over-the-air to customers, who will be notified to download and install it. We urge all users to install the update promptly. During this time, as always, we strongly urge customers to use caution when downloading, using, installing and updating applications from untrusted sources.
This is a huge mistake from such a popular handset company. This shouldn’t just be embarrassing to coders of HTC, but to Google as well. The incident gives another black eye to the search giant’s efforts to change its stigma of leaky privacy security within its Android OS. HTC says the patch will be pushed out over the air after carrier testing.
[via Engadget]