Less than a week after the release of Google T-Mobile G1 smart phone, security experts detected a serious security flaw in its Android operating system that leaves it wide open for hackers to launch drive-by attacks on users' devices.

According to the advisory, Google Android relies on more than 80 different open source packages. And the security error stems from a buffer overflow vulnerability in some of the older, more vulnerable versions of the open source software. Subsequently, an unsuspecting user could be successfully exploited simply by accessing an infected Web page using with a vulnerable operating system, experts say.

Once a user in infected, attackers could then obtain access to any personal information accessible from the victim's browser -- including cookies, information entered into Web application and saved passwords -- in order to steal a bank account numbers, Social Security information and other sensitive data.

“If you end up on a bad guys' site, he can basically take over the phone and run code, and access anything your browser has access to and do anything your browser could do,” said Charlie Miller, principal analyst at Independent Security Evaluators.

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