Hackers can exploit NFC, Chrome browser to take over your Android phone

Despite Google’s valiant attempt to make Android a safer playground for its users by introducing the anti-malware Bouncer service last February, which helps scan apps on Google Play Store for malware and keep them out, experts are still finding security loopholes that can wreak havoc on your Android device.
The first threat we’re going to talk about today comes from the Near Field Communication (NFC) feature on certain Android devices, which is becoming more ubiquitous these days. Though the technology was already used in older phones like the Google Nexus S, released back in 2010, newer devices like Samsung’s Galaxy S3 seem to be finding more uses for it, as NFC is being promoted beyond wireless payment – such as for transferring pictures and other files.
Charlie Miller, a consultant from security firm Accuvant, has recently demonstrated how easy it is to push through malicious code to an Android device. He did it with the help of a device as small as a postage stamp, also known as an NFC tag, by placing it within close proximity to where people would be using their NFC-equipped device the most. This enables the code to be beamed over to the handset, thus allowing hackers to gain full control of the device.
So what you can do to avoid the worst from happening? When it comes to NFC, enabling the feature in combination with Android Beam on your device does leave you with no choice but to accept any incoming transfer – malicious or not. There is currently no mechanism in place where you can select to approve or reject the transfer from other NFC devices. This is obviously something that Google and manufacturers need to address.
The second threat is a security flaw that was found in Google’s Chrome browser for Android. Demonstrating it back in February, Miller, alongside Crowdstrike’s Georg Wicherski, used a piece of software to infect the device through the loophole. The flaw has since been fixed by Google, and those who have updated the browser to its latest version should be relatively safe from such attacks.

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Mark Zuckerberg: No Facebook phone from us

Over the past few years we’ve been hearing rumors every now and then about a possible Facebook phone. However, Mark Zuckerberg has just crushed that idea in Facebook’s recent earnings call saying: “Building out a whole phone really wouldn’t make much sense for us to do.”
And indeed it doesn’t. There are now close to 800 million Android and iOS devices in the market, and Android phones are now growing at a rate of 1 million per day, or 365+ million per year. Plus, there’s a Facebook  app for these devices, that does a pretty good job, or at least it should (if it’s horrible, it’s Facebook’s own fault) at delivering the Facebook service to anyone using such a device.
So why would Facebook go into the hardware business, to build a phone around a single app? There’s not that much more they could offer to users to warrant buying a “Facebook phone” instead of any other phone from another company that also has access to Facebook.

For some reason HTC got the crazy idea last year to make a “Facebook phone”, the HTC Cha Cha, which was basically just  a regular Android phone, with a special hardware button for Facebook. But that’s hardly a reason for anyone who uses Facebook to want to get that phone over other ones.
There are now rumors of HTC working with Facebook yet again for a new “Facebook phone”, which implies some kind of a successor to the HTC Cha Cha, rather than a phone made by Facebook. I doubt this new phone will be any more successful than the HTC Cha Cha, unless HTC makes it one of their flagship devices. But then, people would simply buy it because it would be such a great overall phone, rather than because it would be a “Facebook phone”.

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Next-gen Xiaomi phone to have quad-core S4 Pro chip and 720p display

Xiaomi is the Chinese company behind the popular MIUI ROM.
Last year, they launched their own Xiaomi phone with the MIUI ROM on top, and it seems they’ve been fairly successful with it, as they’ve just announced a $216 million investment in their company. Moreover, leaks are pointing out to a next-gen quad-core smartphone with a 720p display, coming soon from them.
The chip on the rumored phone comes from Qualcomm, and since the only quad-core processor they’ve announced for this year is the S4 Pro with the Adreno 320 GPU, that’s most likely what the high-end Xiaomi will have. The device doesn’t seem to have a front-facing camera, but the pricing might make up for it. The rumored price is just $300, which would be significantly cheaper than Meizu’s $480 quad-core phone (Exynos 4 Quad chip), Meizu being Xiaomi’s main local rival.
The OS version will most likely be Android 4.0, but if they won’t release the new quad-core device soon, it’s possible that Xiaomi will be able to upgrade it to Android 4.1. Even if it’s released with Android 4.0, i’m sure Xiaomi will release the Jelly Bean upgrade soon after, because they just love playing with custom ROMs and the latest versions of Android.
From the pictures, we can see that Xiaomi is following a trend that not many manufacturers have adopted yet – making stylish, yet colorful phones. I think that people want to have different colors on their phones, but so far, most manufacturers are still only choosing the safest colors, like black or white. Actually, not too long ago they probably thought the white color is pretty “daring”, but now it almost seems necessary for all phone models.


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New Paragon Android app lets you easily connect your phone or tablet to Windows and Mac drives

Although there are many easy and convenient ways to hook up a PC to an Android-based smartphone and/or tablet these days, there still isn’t a cohesive and accessible solution around for connecting both Mac and Windows formatted drives to mobile devices.
The compatibility issues are the main reason why you’ll have a very tough job in transferring files between such devices – media used on an Android device needs to be formatted as a FAT32 drive, while Windows and Mac drives are NTFS and HFS+ formatted.
Sure, you can e-mail yourself files, copy them from a laptop to a phone or tablet with the help of an SD card, but why go through such inconvenient procedures when you can do everything straightforward and extremely quickly? Well, you can’t, you might answer, but that’s because you haven’t met Paragon’s new Android app, available as a free download in Google Play.
The Paragon NTFS & HFS+ app (I know, not the most inspired name), is a very easy to use software that allows you to attach to your Android-powered device any NTFS or HFS+ flash drives or hard disk drives and handle them as if they were FAT32-formatted in the first place.
You can copy files from both Windows and Mac drives without the need to change any settings, reformat or make efforts of any kind, so convenience and ease of use are the key words here. Then again, there is a catch for the app, at least for the time being.

In fact, there are two issues you might encounter with Paragon NTFS & HFS+. First off, the app is still in beta, so you might deal with bugs or glitches here and there. That’s not much of an inconvenience, though, especially considering that the developers have promised they will listen to user feedback very carefully and act accordingly.
What could be a major annoyance, however, is making the app work on your specific phone or tablet, as there are some pretty special conditions to be fulfilled. Although it will technically work on any gadget running Android 2.3 or higher, you need to root your device before making use of the app and use an adapter to connect the drives.
Moreover, your phone or tablet has to support USB storage, and officially there aren’t many such devices, especially among the ones released more than a year ago. Then again, there are a bunch of custom ROMs around that take care of that inconvenience for some particular gadgets, so the more industrious Android users will probably have no problem in making Paragon’s new app work.
Enjoy and don’t forget to get back to us with your opinions on the app if you decide to take it for a spin.

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