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Serious Bug Causing Real Problems For Android Handset

Users of the HTC G1 Android phone have come across a scary problem. Some of the handsets are interpreting words typed on the QWERTY keyboard as root commands -- and it is executing them.

According to Wired, if you type in the word "re-boot", for example, the G1 will actually re-boot. ZDNet's Ed Burnette wrote, "When the phone booted it started up a command shell as root and sent every keystroke you ever typed on the keyboard from then on to that shell. Thus every word you typed, in addition to going to the foreground application, would be silently and invisibly interpreted as a command and executed with superuser privileges. Wow!"

This problem is so severe it could completely brick a handset and render it useless. It is unclear exactly which sub-set of devices are affected, but it appears that all the devices running firmware RC29 and earlier are facing the issue.

If you'll remember, late last week a jailbreak hack was found to open up the root command level of Android smartphones. Google caught wind of the bug almost immediately and sent out an automatic firmware update (RC30) to fix the problem. According to Engadet, Google already has re-tooled the RC30 firmware update to address this new problem.

Most users are completely unaware of the problem and could be doing real harm to their handsets, as not everything we type is meant to be interpreted as a root command. Hopefully their G1's will automatically download the newest firmware to solve the problem before their G1 suffers an early demise.

In the meantime, ZDNet's Burnette offers this temporary fix, "Open the keyboard and type these 5 keystrokes: -c-a-t-. That will cause the phantom shell to not listen to commands any more, at least until the next reboot."

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