UPDATED 15:43 EDT / SEPTEMBER 03 2013

Padlock, Cloud Security, Padlock Cloud Security NEWS

Weekly Security Review: Dropbox Client Reverse Engineered, Hytrust Adds Secondary Approval

It’s been an eventful week in the cybersecurity arena. Security researchers have successfully reverse engineered Dropbox, a study confirmed that Android is the most targeted mobile operating system on the market, and Hytrust unveiled a new secondary approval solution at VMworld.

Dhiru Kholia and Przemyslaw Wegrzyn recently announced that they have gained access to the source code for Dropbox’s desktop client using a combination of new and existing reverse engineering techniques. The two researchers claim that they were able to bypass Dropbox’s two-factor authentication, create open source Dropbox clients and perform a wide range of other malicious activities.

Kholia and Wegrzyn argue that the anti-reversing measures employed by Dropbox do not benefit end-users in any way. A spokesperson for the company shot back in a statement to SiliconANGLE that “the user’s computer would first need to have been compromised in such a way that it would leave the entire computer, not just the user’s Dropbox, open to attacks across the board.”

Dropbox is much more vulnerable than users believe, much like Android. A recent study by the Public Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Intelligence Analysis Division found that 79 percent of all mobile attacks in 2013 targeted Google’s operating system . The division perceives fragmentation as a major security concern, and warns that cyber threats will continue to grow as security personnel and emergency responders become increasingly dependent on mobile devices.

Mobile is among the many risk factors that modern enterprises have to take into account, as is virtualization. Cloud security specialist Hytrust is addressing the latter with the latest release of its flagship security appliance, which can automatically delay actions taken by administrators until external approval is granted. The solution was unveiled at the recently concluded VMworld 2013 conference in San Francisco.


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