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Over 40% smartphones, including high-end phones sold by Samsung, Google, Xiaomi, are open to cyber-attack due to security vulnerabilities in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip.
Researchers at Check Point, who performed extensive security review of Qualcomm’s DSP chip, found about 400 vulnerable pieces of code that can affect smartphones.
Qualcomm chips are embedded into more than 1.5 billion smartphone users, according to Check Point and Statista, a data intelligence firm.
China, India, and the United States have the most number of smartphone users; each country easily surpassing 100 million users.
The research said that attackers can use smartphones as a tool for spying without the owners' knowledge. Hackers can exfiltrate photos, videos, call recordings, real-time microphone data, GPS and location data from the phones.
They can also delete personal data like photos, videos, and contact details, and can even make the phone completely unresponsive to the users.
Hackers can hide their activities using malware and other malicious codes, making it difficult to disinfect.
A Digital Signal Processor (DSP) is a system on a chip that has hardware and software designed for tasks including Charging abilities, audio, video, HD Capture, advanced AR abilities and other Multimedia functions.
DSP chips are economical and provide more functionality and innovative features to the mobile phone users but they also introduce new attack surface and weak points to these mobile devices. Complexity for anyone other than their manufacturer to review their design, functionality or code, make these chips more vulnerable.
Check Point revealed the full research details to the stakeholders. They have updated Qualcomm, relevant government officials and mobile vendors to assist them in making the handsets safer.
Published - August 10, 2020 05:01 pm IST
