Android Already Facing Security Concerns

The week-old Android operating system that powers T-Mobile’s G1 smartphone is off to a rough start as a team of experts from ISE have identified and successfully exploited a security vulnerability on the device. The vulnerability is located in one of the 80 open source packages assembled by Google for Android. Further, the vulnerability is related to a buffer overflow in an older version of the package and has already been fixed. However Google didn’t use the latest version of this package for Android.

ISE has not released full details about this issue and are working with Google to resolve the issue. It looks like the impact of this vulnerability is limited to running any code with the privileges of the web browser application and information that it has access to. So a web site would have to trick the user into entering confidential information or cookies and cache from the browser sessions.

What concerns me is the speed at which this has been found. It makes me wonder if there are many more just waiting to be found. There will always be bugs and issues when it comes to software development, but this exploit doesn’t seem to be overly complicated and should have been caught before the release.

Ultimately, this will be a good test of the over-the-air update feature of Android.

You can read more information regarding this exploit on the ISE web site.

Customize the New Sliding Panel Home Screen on Windows Mobile 6.1

I’m sure that everyone with a Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard (non-touch screen) device has been busy playing with the new sliding panel home screen. The question routinely comes up on how to modify the panels and their order as well as add new panels. The answer was easy – simply edit the corresponding xml and registry settings. Unfortunately, the answer may have been easy, but actually doing it can be difficult for some.

Enter CHome Configurator from mind of tlogix over at Smartphone: Nuts & Bolts. This utility will ease the pain of customizing the new sliding panel home screen to your liking. CHome Configurator allows you to add new panels, and modify or delete existing panels without having to mess around with xml files and registry settings. Best of all, this utility is FREE! So you can easily and affordably customize your 6.1 home screen. Now, I would love to see a home screen theme that takes advantage of the sliding panel design. Who’s up to that challenge?

Once you’ve download the 2 CAB files (one for the application and another for the Icon Pack), copy them to your device and install them. Both of these CAB files are pretty small and I would recommend installing them to the device and not the storage card. I’m sure it might be possible to place them on the storage card, but you wouldn’t want to risk any problems using the home screen if the storage card becomes corrupt or is removed.

So, download CHome, customize your home screen and share with us the changes you made. I’ll be playing around with it over the course of the next couple days and I’ll post back with the additions and changes that I’ve made.

One thing to note; If you are running a Windows Mobile Professional device, this application will not work for you. The sliding panel home screen is available on Standard (non-touch screen) devices only. This is due to the fact that Pro devices do not use the same XML based configuration for the today screen.