4200+ Android Apps Responsible for Massive Data Leak

Chances are that you know a developer who has an Android app that has been developed using Firebase. After all, this startup that Google acquired in 2014 provides an excellent app building toolkit, one that can make it very easy for developers to create an app that has some form of cross platform compatibility and can enable them to make an app highly secure as well which is important if you consider how many different security threats there are that you might face on any given day especially when you are an Android user.

With all of that having been said and out of the way, while Firebase does have the potential to make extremely secure apps, this doesn’t mean that all app developers will have configured the settings adequately enough that the app would truly end up being as secure as you might want it to be all in all.

There are over 150,000 apps on the Play Store that have been created using Firebase, and it turns out that over 4,200 of them are leaking sensitive data that would put you at risk including email addresses and the like all of which should have been held far more securely than what actually ended up happening. While nearly 12,000 apps are revealing Firebase databases, only about 4,200 are actually insecure enough that malicious actors can hack into said databases and acquire all of the necessary information at the end of the day, i.e. according to Comparitech investigation.

It turns out that over 7 million email addresses have been leaked because of these 4,200 apps. That’s not all. 4.4 million usernames have also been leaked, and it’s also important to realize that over a million passwords have been compromised as well. When you also take into account the 5 million phone numbers that have been stolen in this manner you will start to get a sense of how truly serious this situation is and how much of an impact it would have on the kind of security you might be able to enjoy on an Android platform.

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• Also read: AV-Test Conducted A New Research To Determine The Best Antivirus For Android Users

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What is truly shocking is that this data breach occurred as a result of the fact that the app developers did not use the adequate security settings that were available to them. This is sheer negligence and it has resulted in a massive data breach that could have widespread consequences. IT is important that every link in the chain is secured otherwise problems like this are bound to end up occurring on a regular basis. Industry decision makers should take this into account and try and ensure that precautions are taken by all concerned parties otherwise things will keep getting worse as time goes by.



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