Hundreds of Android apps contain hard - coded leaky keys and tokens that could be abused by hackers , says security research firm Fallible . The firm reverse engineered the apps to identify security flaws . The keys and tokens frequently belong to third - party services to help app integration , but if leaked could also be used to alter or remove the services . Of the 16,000 apps examined by Fallible , just over 300 had easily - found hard - coded keys for services such as Twitter , Dropbox and Slack . In other cases, he said that it "made no sense" to keep certain secret keys in the app, such as database and mail credentials. The security firm also found 10 examples of secret keys hard - coded into Amazon Web Service apps , which are popular among Silicon Valley start - ups .
Hundreds of Android apps contain hard - coded leaky keys and tokens that could be abused by hackers , says security research firm Fallible . The firm reverse engineered the apps to identify security flaws . The keys and tokens frequently belong to third - party services to help app integration , but if leaked could also be used to alter or remove the services . Of the 16,000 apps examined by Fallible , just over 300 had easily - found hard - coded keys for services such as Twitter , Dropbox and Slack . The security firm also found 10 examples of secret keys hard - coded into Amazon Web Service apps , which are popular among Silicon Valley start - ups .