A recent research which gathered from CNN Money, has given iOS users another reason to jeer at Android users. Thanks to phone hackers, your Android phones can get hacked by merely receiving a picture via text message. This is quite scary as the report says that it is the biggest smartphone flaw ever discovered.
This infection is said to affect about 95% of the Android phones in use today. This was made possible due to the way Android phones analyze incoming text messages. How? If you use an Android device, you must have noticed that your device processes incoming media files even before you open the message. Thus, the malware infected file begins to infect the device as soon as it gets to your phone.
Well, apple users recently got a share of something like this with the Apple text hack. The difference however was that, it could only be done via a text message with characters leading to the freezing of your iPhone and meant that you had to force it to restart. With Android, it gets worse as the malware is capable of wiping your entire device, accessing your apps or turning on your camera without your knowledge.
According to Zimperium, a cybersecurity company, the bug affects only Android devices made within the last 5years and said that they had detected this bug earlier in April and warned Google about it. They also provided a fix but Google simply told them that they would enter into an agreement with the company next year.
Hmmm…. Could some cybersecurity company have a hand in this? Either ways, we certainly need this bug to be fixed and Google has exceeded the 90 days grace period to resolve this situation since the 9th April. Seeing that they didn’t, Zimperium has gone public with the news.
Well, I guess the panic can still be in check seeing that CNNmoney got word form Google that they had sent a fix to partners but whether these partners have been begun to push it out to users is uncertain. This is however a wakeup call to all! Ensure to receive updates as soon as it is made available to avoid security breach on your devices.
