Skip to main content

Google acknowledges critical Bitcoin flaw in Android (and bug fixes are released)

Do any of you own any bitcoins? Fractions of a bitcoin? We’d love to know if you do, and issue you a lovely little warning: if you’re holding any bitcoins on an Android phone or tablet, you may want to store your stash elsewhere. Because of a bug in the way Android generates random numbers, those who use Android devices are at risk of digital theft, according to Bitcoin.org.

Updated on 8-15-2013 by Jeffrey Van Camp: Alex Klyubin, a Google Security Engineer on the Android team has acknowledged that this is a legitimate flaw in Android. The problem, as often seems to be the case, is Java.”Java Cryptography Architecture (JCA) for key generation, signing, or random number generation may not receive cryptographically strong values on Android devices due to improper initialization of the underlying PRNG,” said Klyubin. Translated out of geek speak, that means that Android is, as we thought, not generating random numbers correctly. 

Recommended Videos

You can find some patch code from Google on its official Android blog. We’ve also updated the links below because patches for all wallets have now been issued.

Article originally published on 8-12-2013.

How to know if you’re affected: There appears to be a flaw in Google’s Android operating system, making it impossible for the OS to generate “secure random numbers,” which are needed to encrypt Bitcoin transactions.. This affects those who use Bitcoin wallet apps like Bitcoin Wallet, Blockchain.info, BitcoinSpinner, and Mycelium Wallet. Some apps, like Coinbase and Mt Gox are still secure because they don’t rely on the Android OS to generate their numbers. Every one of these apps now has a patch available to fix this vulnerability, which you can find here: Mycelium Wallet patchBitcoin Wallet patch, BitcoinSpinner patch, Blockchain.info patch.

How to to re-secure your wallet: To protect yourself, Bitcoin.org recommends you do a “key rotation” to your bitcoins. Download the fix for your Wallet app in the Google Play Store as soon as it’s available, generate a new address with the repaired random number generator, and then send your bitcoins from yourself to yourself. If anyone has “stored addresses” from your device previous to the fix, you need to contact them and give them a new one. You ca also send your bitcoins to your computer until you fix up your Android wallet.

We’re hoping those of you with actual bitcoins will understand that process better than we do. Currently, we’re bitcoin broke, so we cannot test this fix. 

If you own any bitcoins, let us know below. Have you purchased anything with them? Why do you like or dislike the platform? We’re a “bit” curious.

Jeffrey Van Camp
As DT's Deputy Editor, Jeff helps oversee editorial operations at Digital Trends. Previously, he ran the site's…
Google fixes long-standing Netflix bug in Feature Drop update
Google Pixel 6 Pro in the hands of a user navigating its home screen.

The latest Google Pixel Feature Drop introduced plenty of new flashy features for the devices and provided a fix for an issue that a number of users have experienced for nearly a year. For quite a while, some Pixel owners have been reporting issues with their phone's Widevine L1 status falling to L3, barring them from streaming DRM-protected content at high resolutions. With this week's Feature Drop, the problem has finally been fixed.

Google has confirmed that the issue should no longer affect Pixel owners, which is good news, though the fix has come a little late. Google announced that it was aware of the problem in April 2021 when users began reporting it and that the company was looking to address it soon. Following the announcement, however, there wasn't any news from Google about a potential fix until now.

Read more
Apple’s iOS 15.3 update fixes critical Safari security bug
iPhone showing Home Screen with widgets resting on soft white cloth background.

Apple has just released iOS 15.3, and while this latest update doesn’t add any significant new features, it addresses at least one critical security flaw. Earlier this month, software engineer Martin Bajanik of FingerprintJS found a serious vulnerability in Safari 15, the browser included in iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, that could leak browsing history information and even credentials from online services that a person is using, such as Google, YouTube, Amazon, and sites using WordPress.

As Bajanik explains, many websites use an API called IndexedDB to request that browsers like Safari and Chrome store information in a local database on a person’s device. Under normal circumstances, a given website should only be able to request information about the databases that it created — any others should be invisible to it.

Read more
A flaw in MediaTek audio chips could have exposed Android users’ conversations
A MediaTek processor on a motherboard.

Security researchers have discovered a new flaw in a MediaTek chip used in over a third of the world’s smartphones that could have potentially been used to listen in on private conversations. The chip in question is an audio processing chip by MediaTek that’s found in many Android smartphones from vendors such as Xiaomi, Oppo, Realme, and Vivo. Left unpatched, researchers say, a hacker could have exploited the vulnerabilities in the chip to eavesdrop on Android users and even hide malicious code.
Check Point Research (CPR) reverse-engineered MediaTek’s audio chip, discovering an opening that could allow a malicious app to install code meant to intercept audio passing through the chip and either record it locally or upload it to an attacker’s server. 
CPR disclosed its findings to MediaTek and Xiaomi several weeks ago, and the four identified vulnerabilities have already been patched by MediaTek. Details on the first can be found in MediaTek’s October 2021 Security Bulletin, while information on the fourth will be published in December. 
“MediaTek is known to be the most popular chip for mobile devices,” Slava Makkaveev, Security Researcher at Check Point Software, said to Digital Trends in a press release. “Given its ubiquity in the world, we began to suspect that it could be used as an attack vector by potential hackers. We embarked research into the technology, which led to the discovery of a chain of vulnerabilities that potentially could be used to reach and attack the audio processor of the chip from an Android application.”
Fortunately, it looks like researchers caught the flaws before they could be exploited by malicious hackers. Makkaveev also raised concerns about the possibility of device manufacturers exploiting this flaw “to create a massive eavesdrop campaign;” however, he notes that his firm didn’t find any evidence of such misuse. 
Tiger Hsu, product security officer at MediaTek, also said that the company has no evidence that the vulnerability has been exploited but added that it worked quickly to verify the problem and make the necessary patches available to all device manufacturers who rely on MediaTek’s audio processors. 
Flaws like these are also often mitigated by security features in the Android operating system and the Google Play Store, and both Makkaveev and Hsu are reminding users to keep their devices updated to the latest available security patches and only install applications from trusted locations. 

Read more