Hackers show off skills at Black Hat conference in Las Vegas

Hacking experts yesterday demonstrated ways to attack Android smart phones using methods they said worked on virtually all such devices in use today, despite recent efforts by search engine giant Google to boost protection.

Experts showed off their hacking skills at the Black Hat hacking conference in Las Vegas, which was attended by around 6,500 corporate and government security technology workers gathered to get updated about the emerging threats to their networks.

According to Sean Schulte of Trustwave's SpiderLabs, Google was making progress, but the authors of malicious software were moving forward.

Google spokeswoman Gina Scigliano refused to make any comment on the security concerns or the new research.

Accuvant researcher Charlie Miller demonstrated a method for delivering malicious code to Android phones that would allow users' phones to be taken over with a new feature called near field communications.

With near field communications users can share photos with friends, make payments or exchange other data with other similarly equipped devices in close proximity of a few centimetres.