Stagefright: major Android security flaw affects millions

Android users have been warned that a major security flaw, nicknamed Stagefright, allows hackers to access smartphones simply by sending a malicious text message.

The flaw is thought to affect the vast majority of Android users and means hackers can read messages, look at private photos or even spy on users through a smartphone's camera and microphone.

According to Joshua Drake, the researcher who found the flaw, hackers can exploit the vulnerability to take control of almost any Android phone simply by sending an infected video via MMS (multimedia messaging service).

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Users cannot even defend themselves by filtering out suspicious messages because the way Google pre-processes videos to make them quicker to view means that the bug will infect a phone "before the sound that you've received a message has even occurred," Drake said in an interview with NPR.

So far, there is no known solution for the problem, but security analysts say that Google is likely to be working on a fix that can be distributed as soon as possible, The Guardian reports.

Chris Wysopal, the chief information security officer for mobile security service Veracode said that "it will be very interesting to see how Google responds to this. They'll have to drive the patch quickly and in a manner that impacts every affected device at the same time. Waiting for handset manufacturers or carriers to issue a patch would be problematic since it could take a month or more.

"This would leave a big window for an attacker to reverse engineer the first patch issued by whichever party to create an exploit that would impact any device. We're likely to see Google force down a tool that addresses the vulnerability for everyone."

Fortune's Robert Hackett advises that the only thing users can do to try to protect themselves is to change the settings for apps that use MMS, such as Messages and Hangouts. " Un-click 'automatically retrieve MMS messages'," Hacket says. "In the meantime, consider using Snapchat or WhatsApp to swap clips, GIFs, and whatnot."

Video: 950 million Android phone vulnerable

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