'A new academic study published today reveals that Android-based password managers have a hard time distinguishing between legitimate and fake applications, leading to easy phishing scenarios. From a report: The study looked at how password managers work on modern versions of the Android OS, and which of the OS features attackers can abuse to collect user credentials via phishing attacks carried out via fake, lookalike apps. What the research team found was that password managers, initially developed for desktop browsers, aren't as secure as their desktop versions. The problem comes from the fact that mobile password managers have a hard time associating a user's stored website credentials with a mobile application and then creating a link between that website and an official app. [...] Researchers say they tested the way five Android password managers create internal maps (connections) between a locally installed app and legitimate internet sites and found that four of the five were vulnerable to abuse. Android versions of password managers from Keeper, Dashlane, LastPass, and 1Password were found to be vulnerable and have prompted the user to auto-fill credentials on fake apps during tests. Researchers found that Google's Smart Lock app did not fall for this fake package name trick, and the reason was because it used a system named Digital Asset Links to authenticate and connect apps to a particular online service.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/18/09/26/1534203 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/