Your Phone Transfer Could Expose Your Photos, Passwords and Health Data

Switching to a new smartphone is supposed to be one of the simplest moments in modern digital life. You tap a few buttons, hold the two devices close together, and watch years of photos, messages, contacts and apps stream onto the new handset. But according to a new study from Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) and the Center for Secure Information Technology Austria (A-SIT), that seemingly seamless process may be far more dangerous than most users realise. The researchers found critical vulnerabilities in the data migration tools shipped by seven major Android manufacturers, flaws that would allow anyone within Wi-Fi range to intercept or manipulate the transfer of a user’s entire digital life.

The researchers behind the study, Florian Draschbacher, Lukas Maar, Lorenz Schumm, Rene Denifl, Lukas Treffner and Stefan Mangard, examined the migration apps bundled by seven Android manufacturers: Google’s Android Switch, Samsung’s Smart Switch, Vivo’s EasyShare, Xiaomi’s Mi Mover, Oppo’s Clone Phone, Huawei’s Phone Clone and Honor’s Device Clone. In every single tool they analysed, they identified weaknesses that allowed them, acting as attackers, to either eavesdrop on the data being transferred or to manipulate it while it was in motion. None of the seven apps emerged unscathed, which suggests the problems are systemic rather than the result of isolated programming mistakes by any one company.

The technical reason these attacks are possible lies in how the migration tools are designed. To avoid dependence on external servers or cloud services, the apps establish a direct Wi-Fi connection between the two smartphones involved in the transfer. This peer-to-peer approach is convenient and fast, but it also means the data is broadcast over the air in a form that, in the implementations studied, was not adequately protected. An attacker who positions themselves within radio range of the two devices can passively observe the traffic or, in some scenarios, actively interfere with it. Indoors, the researchers found that range extends to roughly 20 to 45 metres, which means an adversary does not need to be in the same room to exploit the flaw. Using equipment costing less than 100 euros, the team was able to capture the data streams during a migration.

The sensitivity of what crosses that wireless link during a migration is what makes the findings so consequential. Unlike a single compromised app or account, a data migration moves nearly the entire contents of a smartphone at once. In their experiments, the researchers were able to read text messages, contacts and photographs, but also far more valuable material: health data, stored credentials for Wi-Fi networks, and passwords saved within apps. In some cases they could go beyond passive observation entirely, injecting malware into the new device by tampering with app packages as they were transferred. This transforms the migration moment from a mere privacy risk into a potential full compromise of the target phone, since malware introduced this way would arrive disguised as legitimate software the user had deliberately moved to their new device.

Locations where many people set up new phones in quick succession deserve particular attention. Electronics retailers and mobile phone shops, where staff routinely perform migrations for customers on the premises, could become attractive hunting grounds for attackers, since a single afternoon in such a location might expose multiple transfers. The researchers highlight this concentration effect as one of the more practical dangers arising from the vulnerabilities, because it lowers the effort required for an attacker to find victims compared with waiting for individual users to migrate their data at home.

The scale of exposure is difficult to overstate. The apps examined have collectively been downloaded more than 12 billion times, and because they come pre-installed on almost every Android device, most users have never made a conscious choice to install them or even to think about them. As Draschbacher notes, this combination of pre-installation and convenience is precisely what gives the vulnerabilities such reach. A flaw in an obscure app that users must actively seek out affects a self-selected minority; a flaw in the default migration path affects essentially everyone who upgrades their phone, which is to say nearly the entire Android user base over time.

Before publishing, the Graz team followed a responsible disclosure process, reporting the vulnerabilities to the affected manufacturers in advance so that fixes could be prepared. All seven manufacturers confirmed the severity of the issues, with five of the security alerts classified as high severity, and all have since released security updates addressing the reported problems. This coordinated response means that the practical risk to users today depends heavily on whether their devices are up to date. The researchers’ advice to anyone planning a migration is to ensure that the latest version of the data migration app is installed on both the old and the new device before starting the transfer, and to install all relevant updates. In some cases, this may require updating the entire operating system first, since the migration app and the underlying system components it relies on may both have received fixes.

The study, titled Clone2Pwn: A Systematic Security Analysis of Data Migration Tools in the Android Ecosystem, was presented at the European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, known as ESORICS, in 2026. The systematic nature of the analysis is notable: rather than examining a single app in depth, the team built a comparative methodology that could be applied across the whole ecosystem of migration tools, which is how they were able to demonstrate that the weaknesses recur across vendors that compete fiercely with one another. Findings of this kind often prompt broader questions about how such pre-installed system components are audited, since they typically receive less public scrutiny than flagship apps distributed through app stores.

The work also fits into a longer record of security research from TU Graz’s Institute of Information Security. Researchers there were involved in the discovery of Meltdown and Spectre, the processor vulnerabilities that affected the vast majority of modern computer chips. In 2024, the institute’s researchers described SnailLoad, an attack that monitors users’ online activity by comparing the latency patterns of internet connections against the digital fingerprints of online content. They also identified Collide+Power, a method in which analysing a processor’s energy consumption allows data to be read from memory. The institute’s work is not limited to finding attacks: the Ascon algorithm, developed by Maria Eichlseder, Christoph Dobraunig, Florian Mendel and Martin Schläffer, was designated the international standard for lightweight cryptography in 2023. In April 2026, TU Graz opened the Cybersecurity Campus Graz, a new facility dedicated to advanced research and teaching in IT security, underscoring the institutional commitment behind studies of this kind.

For everyday users, the practical takeaway is relatively simple but easy to overlook. The moment of switching phones feels private and routine, yet it is one of the few times when a device’s complete contents are transmitted over an unprotected local wireless link. Updating both devices before the transfer, performing migrations in trusted environments rather than in public or commercial spaces, and treating the migration app itself as software that needs patching like any other are all reasonable precautions. The study serves as a reminder that convenience features built into the core of an operating system deserve the same security attention as any third-party software, and that the wireless protocols used during device-to-device transfers must be designed with an adversarial observer in mind from the outset.

Subject of Research: Security vulnerabilities in Android smartphone data migration tools

Article Title: TU Graz uncovers major security flaws in data migration tools

Article References: TU Graz uncovers major security flaws in data migration tools. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: Android, data migration, smartphone security, Wi-Fi eavesdropping, phone cloning, cybersecurity, TU Graz, ESORICS 2026, malware injection, responsible disclosure, Graz, uncovers