Windows Phone not affected by smartphone exploit

A few days ago, the newly launched software security firm CrowdStrike announced that it had found a flaw in Android-based smartphones. The firm claims that the flaw would allow hackers to take over an Android smartphone just by getting the phone's user to click on a link in an email which would then begin the infection process.

Now there's word that CrowdStrike has shown that the flaw will work on all smartphones that use web browsers based on the Webkit browser engine. That includes all iOS devices as well as Blackberry smartphones.

However, the mobile OS that isn't affected by this flaw is Microsoft's Windows Phone. According to ZUnited.com, this is due to Microsoft using their own browser engine for Windows Phone rather than Webkit. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz has reportedly confirmed this with the web site.

Kurtz will reportedly be demonstrating this smartphone flaw tomorrow at a computer security conference. However, at the moment there doesn't seem to be anything that users can do except to wait until Google, Apple and Research in Motion issue OS updates that fix this flaw. Of course, they can also choose not to click on every email link that is sent to them. So far, Google, Apple and RIM have yet to comment about CrowdStrike's claims.