The augmented reality game, "Pokemon Go," may have a security risk in the app.
According to Fortune magazine, a potential security vulnerability exists for players who used their Google account to sign up for the game. Adam Reeve, a principal architect at RedOwl, a cybersecurity startup, wrote in a blog post about the risks.
The risk appears to only affect iOS users who sign into Pokemon Go with their Google credentials. Reeve wrote about the issue on his blog:
"To play the game you need an account. Weirdly, Niantic [Labs] won't let you just create one - you need to sign in with an existing account from one of two services - the pokemon.com website or Google. Now the Pokemon site is for some reason not accepting new signups right now so if you're not already registered there you'll need to use a Google account - and that's where the fun begins.
"I started the game, hit the Google button, and was redirected to log in. Normally you'd see a little message saying what data the app is going to be able to access - something like "This app will be able to view your email address and name". For some reason that's not shown in this case, but I went ahead and logged in anyway. Then on a whim I went to see which permissions it was granted (you can see for your own account <a href="http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fsecurity.google.com%2Fsettings%2Fsecurity%2Fpermissions%3Fpli%3D1&t=NDdlOGY1MjE0N2QxYTNiYzk5ZmUwYmQxYWE2NzkxZDgxYTUyYTQ4Zix1YXNjUm8yUQ%3D%3D">right here</a>). To say I was a little stunned is putting it lightly - it said: "Pokemon Go has full access to your Google account." (Read the rest from his blog <a href="http://adamreeve.tumblr.com/post/147120922009/pokemon-go-is-a-huge-security-risk" target="_blank">here</a>.)
CNET provided a fix for the issue as well as a note from Niantic indicating that the company is addressing the issue.
Read the full story from Fortune here.
Cox Media Group
