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Droid X2 plus ActiveSync equals DATA SLURP

Oh no, Moto

A Seattle-based security engineer has made the remarkable and disturbing claim that Motorola's Droid X2 using ActiveSync sends sensitive user data back to the company at pretty much every opportunity.

Ben Lincoln writes here that he discovered the data after routing his phone's data through a proxy to test Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, and discovering a Motorola-owned domain, svcmot.com, in the proxy logs.

Lincoln writes that “connections to Motorola were triggered every time I updated the ActiveSync configuration on my phone, and that the unencrypted HTTP traffic contained the following data:

  • The DNS name of the ActiveSync server (only sent when the configuration is first created).
  • The domain name and user ID I specified for authentication.
  • The full email address of the account.
  • The name of the connection.

“As I looked through more of the proxy history, I could see less-frequent connections in which larger chunks of data were sent - for example, a list of all the application shortcuts and widgets on my phone's home screen(s).”

He goes on to detail a host of data captures associated with Facebook, Twitter, Picasa, Photobucket, YouTube, IMAP and POP3 e-mail accounts, Yahoo! Mail accounts, Flickr, and RSS feeds. For many account types, Lincoln notes, passwords are included in the data sent to Motorola.

Device IMEI and IMSI, phone number, carrier, and a host of other device-specific details are also captured. Lincoln also provides detailed instructions for others to try to reproduce what he's observed.

The Register has requested comment from Motorola, and will update readers if a response is received. ®

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