Android Developer Tools Contain Vulnerabilities

Several of the most popular cloud-based and downloadable tools Android developers use are affected.

Dark Reading Staff, Dark Reading

December 5, 2017

1 Min Read
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Android application developer tools Android Studio, Eclipse, and Intellij-IDEA contain vulnerabilities, Check Point researchers revealed in a report today.

Android Application Package Tool (APKTool), Cuckoo-Droid service, and other Android application reverse-engineering tools also had vulnerabilities too, according to Check Point, which discovered the vulnerabilities.

The APKTool's XML External Entity (XXE) vulnerability can expose the entire OS file system of its users. The attacker could then take a malicious AndroidManifest.xml file to exploit the XXE vulnerability, the report notes. As for the developer tools, Android Studio, Eclipse, and Intellij-IDEA, the attackers could load a malicious AndroidManifest.xml file onto any Android project, which in turn would start "spitting out any file configured by the attacker," the report states.

Check Point notified Google, APKTool developers, and the other integrated development environment (IDEs) companies of the vulnerabilities, which have all now been patched.

Read more about the vulnerabilities here.

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Dark Reading Staff

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