Nowadays it is undeniable that men tend to be more dependent on technology. It can easily be proven with the unstoppable popularity of smartphones and its continuous upgrades. These smartphones are designed to do smart stuff aside from the very purpose of communication. Such phones today are capable of organizing your schedules and even locating things or places for you. Definitely owning one is a smart choice.
However such so-called smart decision might be thwarted by a scheme smarter than the smartphones itself. For just recently, experts found out that almost 95% of smartphone users running an Android version 2.2 to 5.1 of operating system are susceptible to attack. This means that hackers can send codes and infiltrate your phones without even you knowing it. Yes, a simple message would do enough harm to you and your smartphone.
Experts claim that the problem begins from the process by which Android phones analyze incoming messages. An android component known as "Stagefright" is seen to be the culprit of the loophole of the system. The said component is responsible for or being used by Android phones to process incoming messages or media files. Which means all the hacker needs is your phone number to infect your smartphone with a malware without you even knowing or acknowledging the activity happening within your phone. It will just blend in the background.
As to the words of Joshua Drake, the one who found out about the Android flaw and the co-author Android Hacker's Handbook, he emphasized that;
"These vulnerabilities are extremely dangerous because they do not require that the victim take any action to be exploited ...Unlike spear-phishing, where the victim needs to open a PDF file or a link sent by the attacker, this vulnerability can be triggered while you sleep. Before you wake up, the attacker will remove any signs of the device being compromised, and you will continue your day as usual-with a trojaned phone."
Now statement of the expert may really be scary especially if the platform company and its phone manufacturing partners would not do anything about the said flaw. But I doubt if they would be slacking off regarding the issue, especially that Android is considerably the widely used mobile platform, taking almost 82% of the market. And for all the Android users out there, the smartest thing to do as of now is to wait for some update of the operating system.
