95% of Android phones can be hacked with just one MMS, millions at risk
The most scandalous threat is tickling the nerves of Android phones owners: Zimperium zLabs reported six gaping hole in Google OS in April 2015. They also told Forbes that while Google sent out patches to its partners, unbelievably, most manufacturers did not make fixes available to protect their customers yet. The bugs are called the worst Android flaws ever discovered.
Security researchers claim that 95% of Android devices – roughly 950 million smartphones – are exposed to the exploit. Older devices running on an Android OS version below 2.2 are secured as well as gizmos running the latest build of Silent Circle's Blackphone, which has already patched. Security updates for Nexus phone are slated to be released soon.
The quickest way is to disable auto-fetching of MMS for Hangout.
You can do it literally in a minute:
1. open Hangout;
2. tap Options on the top left corner;
3. tap Settings -> SMS;
4. uncheck the Auto Retrieve MMS option in the Advanced Tab.
If you use default messaging apps, you can do the same like this:
1. open the messaging app;
2. tap More -> Settings -> More Settings
3. tap Multimedia Messages -> Turn OFF Auto Retrieve.
Let's hope that smartphone manufacturers will finally take these issues seriously. We can also encourage them a bit by tweeting directly to the manufacturers, which at most have customer support accounts on Twitter.
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