A group of hackers has managed to take control of Sony’s Backup and Restore service on Google Play and this has resulted in a lot of commotion online. The tool in question is a system application which comes preloaded with many smartphones and tablets from the company.
As the name suggests, the Sony Backup and Restore tool basically allows you to make backups of your entire handset including apps and personal information such as passwords and browser data. Owing to this, the permissions given to the app are what make this a huge security risk.
And the scary part is that it cannot be uninstalled mainly because it’s a system app. Basically, hackers will be able to access almost all of the data on an Xperia device and even modify it. Sony has confirmed that it’s looking into the situation and it looks like the company has already taken action since the tool is no longer listed on the Google Play Store.
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Xperia Blog points out that the application was shown to be managed by HeArT HaCkEr Group on Google Play as is visible in the images above. No suspicion activity has been reported by users as yet and to be on the safe size, we’d recommend not making any new backups of your data until Sony goes on the record about the issue being resolved.
So far, Sony has only issued a statement that it ‘takes the security and privacy of customer data very seriously.’ The company is yet to confirm the hack on its Backup and Restore application.