A cybersecurity firm has confirmed that 950 million Android phones can be hacked simply by receiving a text message.
In what is being called, “the biggest smartphone flaw ever discovered,” affecting about 95% of the Androids in use today, user’s phone can be infected by receiving an image via text.
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The problem stems from the way Android phones analyze incoming text messages. Even before you open a message, the phone automatically processes incoming media files — including pictures, audio or video. That means a malware-laden file can start infecting the phone as soon as it’s received, according Zimperium, a cybersecurity company that specializes in mobile devices. h/t cnn
The massive Android flaw joins the reveal of a recent Apple text hack, that allowed anyone sending a particular text to power off phones.
