Loophole Puts Homebrew Apps on Palm Pre without Hacking

The homebrew apps have been popping up regularly ever since the WebOS ROM leaked out, but they required a bit of tinkering that would make some users uneasy. Now we're hearing about a loophole in the Palm Pre security that will allow you to install homemade apps without rooting the device.



Home-coded apps can be installed on the Palm Pre through the email application. Basically, with a slight amount of tweaking, the installation only requires you to email yourself a link to the IPK file. There are already an app or two out there capable of using this vulnerability, with more sure to be on the way.

Obviously, this is a pretty significant security issue that some black hat coders could take advantage of, so it's likely that Palm will patch this vulnerability pretty soon. At least they should; otherwise, we'll start seeing some malware schemes targeted specifically for this hole in the Palm Pre. So if you want to take advantage of this opportunity, do it soon.

See the mobile security site for ways to protect your phone. For more tech news, stick with the blog:

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