A study reveals that MediaTek’s chips had a flaw in them that resulted in a third of all smartphones carrying said chip vulnerable to outside attacks.
Smartphone vulnerabilities aren’t the easiest to exploit and extort, despite what any movie about hacking would have you believe. That’s why most hacking and cybercrime occurs through the likes of phishing and discreetly seeding in Trojans one one’s device. Attacks that require just the right amount of conviction and a small hint of user unfamiliarity with what they’re dealing. It’s why we keep hearing of phishing attacks in the news: cybercrime’s so much easier when the victim trails themselves into giving away vital personal information. However, when the threat comes in-built, right with your mobile device, things are a little trickier. Of course, they’re also much more dangerous as well, since hackers can have access to virtually anything,
MediaTek, a Taiwanese based company, is a brand name most mobile phone users are probably aware of to some extent. The tech giant is one of the biggest suppliers of processing chips for smartphones, accounting for 43% of the entire market. With such a large share of the cuts, and a lot of it dedicated to Android based phones, a vulnerability in its chips would leave MediaTek very wide open for an attack. Even worse is just how many other phones a cybersecurity threat would take down in the process. 43% of the market is no joke, and having most of it being concentrated in Android phones means that this particular subset of consumers is being put in a very troubled spot.
A report published by cybersecurity firm Check Point reveals that the vulnerability in MediaTek chips essentially allows bad actors and the like to utilize your phone’s microphone in order to hear in on whatever is being said. There is some hope, however, in the fact that bad actors need to first have malware installed on the device before anything else can occur. Essentially, even the chip hacking is a process that requires a successful phishing attack to take place first. Trick the smartphone owner into downloading the malware via an authentic looking webpage, and everyone’s good to go. Save for the victim, that is.
Read next: Kraken Security Labs Reveals Tutorial On How To Recreate Fingerprints That Work Across Tech Devices
Smartphone vulnerabilities aren’t the easiest to exploit and extort, despite what any movie about hacking would have you believe. That’s why most hacking and cybercrime occurs through the likes of phishing and discreetly seeding in Trojans one one’s device. Attacks that require just the right amount of conviction and a small hint of user unfamiliarity with what they’re dealing. It’s why we keep hearing of phishing attacks in the news: cybercrime’s so much easier when the victim trails themselves into giving away vital personal information. However, when the threat comes in-built, right with your mobile device, things are a little trickier. Of course, they’re also much more dangerous as well, since hackers can have access to virtually anything,
MediaTek, a Taiwanese based company, is a brand name most mobile phone users are probably aware of to some extent. The tech giant is one of the biggest suppliers of processing chips for smartphones, accounting for 43% of the entire market. With such a large share of the cuts, and a lot of it dedicated to Android based phones, a vulnerability in its chips would leave MediaTek very wide open for an attack. Even worse is just how many other phones a cybersecurity threat would take down in the process. 43% of the market is no joke, and having most of it being concentrated in Android phones means that this particular subset of consumers is being put in a very troubled spot.
A report published by cybersecurity firm Check Point reveals that the vulnerability in MediaTek chips essentially allows bad actors and the like to utilize your phone’s microphone in order to hear in on whatever is being said. There is some hope, however, in the fact that bad actors need to first have malware installed on the device before anything else can occur. Essentially, even the chip hacking is a process that requires a successful phishing attack to take place first. Trick the smartphone owner into downloading the malware via an authentic looking webpage, and everyone’s good to go. Save for the victim, that is.
Read next: Kraken Security Labs Reveals Tutorial On How To Recreate Fingerprints That Work Across Tech Devices