Android users, beware: Your phone could be open to attack

A report from Duo Security found that over 50% of Android devices have unpatched vulnerabilities.

Duo Security offers two-factor authentication for mobile phones. This finding was based on a vulnerability assessment conducted by Duo’s mobile app called X-Ray, which scans mobile devices for security gaps. The app became available to consumers a couple of months ago and has since collected information from over 20,000 Android devices.

The results are concerning, considering that hackers and malware can exploit these gaps to gain control of phones, and considering carriers are notoriously slow at fixing vulnerabilities.

Duo’s CTO will be presenting the full study tomorrow at Rapid7’s United Summit conference in San Francisco. He promised to follow up next week on the company blog with full results, statistical methodology and the company’s plans for X-Ray in the future. Read his blog post.