It's amazing how much ubiquitous and powerful mobile devices have changed the computing landscape in a relatively brief time. In today's Black Hat Asia 2015 Briefing update we'll preview three exciting sessions that will delve into security issues surrounding our pocket-sized computers.
Mobile banking is only getting bigger, and will eventually eclipse more traditional bank-access methods. Banks love it: lower costs, more customer data, win-win all around. But how does the customer fare when it comes to the security of their private information? Not as well as you'd hope, as you'll find out in (In)Security of Mobile Banking. Eric Filiol and Paul Irolla carried out static and dynamic analyses of numerous banking apps, and found that almost all of them endanger users' private data, sometimes severely. Perhaps worse, some institutions, when alerted, didn't seem to care. Come to the Briefing for the full details.
The march of the mobiles continues in the business world, too. Companies are incorporating an unprecedented number of mobile devices into core business processes. This lead to security issues, and a particularly striking case appears in the SAP Mobile ecosystem, as SAP has access to most essential functions of large enterprises. Attacking SAP Mobile will take you on an exhaustive tour of how to hack SAP products -- XSS, XXE, hardcoded static encryption keys, platform-specific vulnerabilities, privilege escalations -- and even access compromised phones. A concurrent whitepaper release will focus on assessing SAP security.
Finally, a more specific attack. Android 4.1 restricted user applications from accessing certain logs, but Black Hat presenters Ryan Johnson and Angelos Stavrou found a way to circumvent this limitation on Samsung devices, and through the innocuous android.permission.RECEIVE.BOOT.COMPLETED no less. Resurrecting the READ_LOGS Permission on Samsung Devices will detail the attack, which allows user-space applications to access extremely private user information originating from Facebook Messenger, text messaging, WhatsApp, Google Maps, email metadata, and more.
Black Hat Asia 2015 takes place March 24 to 27 at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. Get registered today!