Android ‘reboot’ command gets a fix

Just in case there weren’t enough reasons to stay clear of the G1, it appears there’s an issue with security and root level access to the Linux kernel.

Rumour mill has hit overdrive of late, with an issue over privileged access to the operating system’s core being exposed.

Google has put out a fix for this issue, along with another that’s worried customers.

It’s come to light that users were given top-level administrator privileges automatically on their G1, where any text entered could be read by Android as a system command.

It just gets funnier and funnier.

This issue was apparently picked up when a random user entered in the word ‘reboot’ into an SMS, where the phone promptly acted by shutting down and then restarting.

If anyone out there can corroborate this, it would be of interest.

Another issue came to light of late *sigh* over the browser’s weakness, where some websites that have been deliberately built around damaging code could take over control of the browser.

Both of these have been resolved with the latest updates and really only affected early shipping code, which are most all of the handsets so we’ve heard.

It is reassuring to know that besides man being fallible, Google is too.