Fraunhofer Institute security researchers found serious security concerns in nine password managers for Android when they surveyed them for their research.
Password managers are popular applications used to store control information identity. Όλες οι εφαρμογές που κυκλοφορούν αυτή τη στιγμή υπόσχονται ασφαλή αποθήκευση τοπικά (στον υπολογιστή σας, ή γενικότερα στο σύστημα που τις χρησιμοποιεί) ή αποθήκευση στο web κάπου σε ένα Cloud. Μερικές εφαρμογές έρχονται και με τις δύο επιλογές.
A recent study by the Fraunhofer Institute analyzed nine password managers for Google's Android operating system. Researchers analyzed the following applications:
LastPass, 1Password, My Passwords, Dashlane Password Manager, Informaticore's Password Manager, F-Secure KEY, Keepsafe, Keeper, and Avast Passwords.
Some of these have more than 50 millions of installations.
The group's conclusions were very worrying for users of these applications on the Android platform.
The research revealed that password saving applications, despite their claims, do not provide adequate protection mechanisms, and sometimes abuse confidenceusers by exposing them to risk.
Three vulnerabilities were found in the LastPass app alone. The first concerns a hard-coded master key, the second mentions data leaks through the program tours, and finally, a vulnerability affecting LastPass 4.0.x for Android that allows hackers to steal the main stored code access.
At least one vulnerability has been identified in each of the above-mentioned applications analyzed by the researchers. Apart from the three above mentioned and not only observed in LastPass, another case has been identified that by installing a simple utility, extracting passwords was a game.
You can read all vulnerabilities for each of the above applications from the following link:
https://team-sik.org/trent_portfolio/password-manager-apps/
Let's say some of these security gaps have already been repaired, while some others are still under development. This means you should be very careful if you use password managers on the Android platform.
