‘Manufacturers’ apps make millions of Android phones vulnerable to hacking’

If you think saving your vital data in the mobile devices is a wise thing to do, read this:  Millions of Android phones could be easily hijacked using software that was installed on them by their manufacturers.  Hackers have claimed that the same ‘remote support’ apps loaded on phones and tablets made by HTC, LG, […]

If you think saving your vital data in the mobile devices is a wise thing to do, read this:  Millions of Android phones could be easily hijacked using software that was installed on them by their manufacturers.
 Hackers have claimed that the same ‘remote support’ apps loaded on phones and tablets made by HTC, LG, Samsung, and ZTE and many other manufacturers are vulnerable to hacking.
The apps are given special access to the phone, using digital certificates, which hackers can break into and then use.
However, Check Point has made an app that will check whether phones are vulnerable to the hack and whether they have been infected. 
Exploiting the privileges could let people ‘steal personal data, track device locations, turn on microphones to record conversations’, according to Check Point, the security firm that found the hack have named it ‘Certifi-Gate’. The Check Point mobile threat research team disclosed its findings at a briefing session at Black Hat USA 2015 in Las Vegas, and described it as “a previously unknown vulnerability in the architecture of popular mobile Remote Support Tools (RSTs) used by virtually every Android device manufacturer and network service provider”
The affected companies have been notified about the hack and are pushing out fixes, according to Check Point. 
Google and Samsung have said they would release monthly security fixes for Android phones, a growing target for hackers, after the disclosure of a bug designed to attack the world’s most popular mobile operating system.
But Samsung Vice President Rick Segal acknowledged that his company could not force the telecommunications carriers that buy its devices in bulk to install the fixes and that some might do so only for higher-end users.
“If it’s your business customers, you’ll push it,” Segal said in an interview. Samsung is the largest maker of Android phones.