Over the weekend, Palm has released a security update for the Treo 650, 680, and 700p. This security update, which is intended only for the above listed devices, closes an obscure security hole in the version of the Palm OS used on the Treo.

According to Palm, a security vulnerability was discovered in the Treo operating system that would allow a Find command to execute when the Palm OS password protection was turned on. The Make Emergency Call option was used to execute this find. The Find command would return the results of the search, however, it would not display the record details for a record returned in the found set. In other words, you could see that there was a matching record in the Palm, but you could not get to the record details.

The patch that was released over the weekend removed the ability to execute a Find command from the Make Emergency Call screen. Treo 650, 680, and 700p owners are encouraged to apply this patch to their Treo.

I tested the patch on my Treo 700p on Saturday. The install process was easy. You can download the patch to your computer and then HotSync the installer over to the Treo, or, you can download the patch directly to your Treo over the air by using the Blazer web browser. Before applying any software update to your Treo, it is a good idea to backup your Treo before starting. (I use Resco Backup. Others like NVBackup. If you don’t use either of those applications, you can back up your data by performing a HotSync operation before you HotSync the patch to your device.)

After the update has been downloaded or HotSync’ed over to your Palm, tap the installer icon to apply the update. Once the security patch was applied to my Treo 700p, I was unable to exploit the security vulnerability.

The entire process should take you less than 20 minutes. Since this is a Palm OS patch, not a full-blown Palm OS update, if you ever hard reset your Palm for any reason, you will need to reapply this patch.

Download links:

Treo 650 users http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/treo/650securityupdate.html

Treo 680 users http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/treo/680securityupdate.html

Treo 700p users http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/treo/700psecurityupdate.html

Labels: palm, treo