Stagefright, Android’s media playback system, was found with a bug earlier this year in July. The bug allowed hackers to break into any device by simply sending a specifically structured text message. However Google promptly responded to this and fixed the bug.
You ask how is this news relevant now, in a world of iPhone launches and Google events, about half a year away from Stagefright’s illness? The answer lies with a similar discovery made by Zimperium, the same company which had earlier found this bug. Stagefright is open to two such similar bugs and requires no more than a certain kind of multimedia message this time.
This basically means that a hacker can remotely execute a code of a device by sending an MP3 or MP4 file containing the required malware to the user. Zimperium mentioned in a blog post,
“The vulnerability lies in the processing of metadata within the files, so merely previewing the song or video would trigger the issue.”
The one way you can protect yourself from malware until these bugs get fixed is to avoid opening messages containing multimedia files from unknown sources.
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