Use letters, numbers, and special symbols. Don’t share your passwords with other people. Avoid repeating the same password across different platforms. These are common tips that people share to ensure that you keep yourself and your personal data safe online.
Unfortunately, you can do absolutely everything right and still be at risk. Case in point: Qualcomm has just made it public that there’s been a vulnerability in 64 of its chipsets which was exploited by hackers to target Android users.
Qualcomm Chipsets Were Found To Have A Vulnerability Letting Android Users Be Targeted
I don’t need to tell you this, but Qualcomm makes a whole lot of the chipsets that end up inside Android devices. Apart from the Qualcomm Snapdragon family of chips, from the low-end to the flagship range, the company also makes modems and connectivity modules for smartphones.
Unfortunately, considering how many chipsets the company has in Android smartphones across the world, it is extremely worrying to hear a report that there was a zero-day vulnerability in 64 of Qualcomm’s chipsets—which includes the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 888, and connectivity modules like the FastConnect 7800 which can be found in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and 8 Gen 3.
And it’s not even just Android devices that could potentially have been at risk. The Snapdragon X55 5G modem is one of the affected chipsets and you can find that one inside the iPhone 12 series. There’s no information as to whether iPhone users were targeted though.
The Vulnerability Was Used To Target Individuals And Not For A Widespread Cyberattack
If your first worry is that your bank account details and your life secrets have been taken by the wolves, you very likely don’t need to worry about anything. As much as this was a vulnerability that might have been able to affect you, work done by Google’s Threat Analysis Group and Amnesty International’s Security Lab gives the notion that targets were carefully selected.
What that means is that the cyberattacks were instituted on individuals that the hackers must have chosen for one reason or another. There’s no public info on the people who were targeted and why they might have been targeted. In fact, there’s no public info regarding the team or person who was carrying out these attacks.
Qualcomm Has Made A Patch Available To OEMs Since Last Month
Vulnerabilities of this kind are extremely serious and there’s no way to downplay how dangerous they can be, considering the fact that potentially millions of smartphones out there have any of the affected chipsets in them. In a way, we’re fortunate that the attack was not widespread.
Qualcomm didn’t waste any time in providing a patch for this vulnerability, as they’ve had it available for OEMs since last month. However, Qualcomm can’t push the patch on its own. It is up to the respective manufacturers to release an update that customers can use to install the patch and safeguard themselves from that exploit being used against them in the future.
