Tens of thousands of Android devices are leaving their debug port exposed
Credit:
android
Countless Android devices are leaving themselves open to attack after being shipped with a critical port left unsecured.
Android Debug Bridge (ADB) is a feature that allows developers to communicate with an Android device remotely, executing commands, and – if necessary – taking full remote control.
As its name suggests, the facility is tremendously useful when it comes to debugging a device and ironing out bugs. However, if not disabled on shipping devices it is open to abuse by criminal hackers. Security researcher Kevin Beaumont highlighted the danger in a blog post late last week:
