Google suspends issuance of pre-paid Google Wallet cards; says rooted phones are less secure

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Google has announced that it has suspending the issuing of new pre-paid Google Wallet cards as a result of a second security exploit with its Wallet software being discovered.

"To address an issue that could have allowed unauthorized use of an existing prepaid card balance if someone recovered a lost phone without a screen lock, tonight we temporarily disabled provisioning of prepaid cards. We took this step as a precaution until we issue a permanent fix soon."

The issue Google is reffering to is one where a thief could very easily reset the 4 digit PIN code that Google requres for accessing Google Wallet cards. The company also refers to a brute force attack against rooted phones that was discovered, saying rooted phones are inherently less secure:

"Sometimes users choose to disable important security mechanisms in order to gain system-level 'root' access to their phone; we strongly discourage doing so if you plan to use Google Wallet because the product is not supported on rooted phones. That's why in most cases, rooting your phone will cause your Google Wallet data to be automatically wiped from the device. "

"Most cases" being the key phrase here. We feel the need to point out that any thief aware of this brute force attack would also know how to root a stolen phone, so the user having his or her own phone rooted with Google Wallet wouldn't seem to, realistically speaking, be much less secure than an unrooted phone. The issue could well be whether the phone can be rooted at all, not whether or not the phone has been rooted while Google Wallet is in use. [via Android Central]