Video details Android browser intercept flaw

IBM security researchers found a vulnerability in the Android mobile operating system that could allow an attacker to intercept browser operations by injecting JavaScript on the device.

Android fixes on the way.

Roee Hay and Yair Amit from IBM's Rational Application Security Research Group demonstrated that a malicious, non-privileged application could break the browser URL loading process and sandbox to inject JavaScript into an arbitrary domain.

In an advisory, they said the vulnerability "has the same implications as global [cross-site scripting] attack albeit from an installed application rather than another website".

"The malicious application could also install as a service to in order to inject JavaScript code from time to time into the currently opened tab, thus completely intercepting the user's browsing experience," the researchers wrote.

Android 2.2 (Froyo) and versions 2.3.4 and 3.1 (Honeycomb) were vulnerable to the exploits.

Versions 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) and 3.2 had a fix while a release for 2.2 patches was in the pipeline.

"We would like to thank the Android security team for the efficient and quick way in which they handled this security issue," the researchers said.

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