...stuff I do and things I like...

Tuesday, March 31 2015

Mobile Security News Update March 2015

Back from CanSec! Here the mobile update for March (barely made it!).

Conferences
    RSA Conference has a mobile track (link points to track) but I'm not going to list each talk here.

    Black Hat Mobile Security Summit London, UK. Believe it or not it's all mobile talks! Mostly Android, one iOS and one Windows Phone talk and like 2 generic talks.


CFPs

Android 5.1 / Nexus 5 issues: I recently updated to Android 5.1 (so did my friend Michael). Now we both have massive stability issues with our phones. Michael actually doesn't have stability issues his phone refuses to boot up. It boots until the first colored dots appear and then reboots again. The reason for this bootloop are unknown. Some people say this is due to issues with the phones power button. Michael indeed had some power button issues before the bootloop happened. My phone just started to randomly reboot. The issue seems known (search for Android 5.1 random reboot and you will find many reports).

Official Chinese translation of The Android Hacker's Handbook available on April 10th.

Dimple is a small NFC sticker with four or two buttons for Android devices. You are the one who chooses the button functionality. It makes doing everyday tasks quicker and saves your precious time. <-- from their website. This is basically a set of actual buttons (as in hardware) that you can stick on your Android. The buttons likely just activate a RFID tag that is picked up by your phone that then will perform some action. Very simple technology. Should be farely easy to hack (without physically pressing the button). Let's see, maybe I will order a sample just for fun. I have a pending Android NFC blog post anyway (but not time).

Links