CYBR650-T302
Week 4

Wi-Fi flaws discovered, IPhone, Nexus, and Other Smartphones

Google Project Zero researcher Gal Beniamini has discovered vulnerabilities in Broadcom’s system-on-chip (SoC) allowing a hacker the ability the hijack cell phone’s without any interaction from the user. Broadcom Wi-Fi chips are used in many cell phone brands to include Google’s Nexus 5, 6 & 6P, IPhone 4’s and above, and most Samsung Android smartphones.

According to Gal Beniamini “An attacker who is in Wi-Fi range can exploit the security holes found by the Google researcher to take complete control of a vulnerable device without any user interaction.” (Kovacs, 2017) Broadcom was very responsive in fixing the issues and supplying the patches the affected companies.

Apple has scheduled an emergency security update for the remote code execution vulnerability. Samsung has also released a maintenance update with a Google patch and security fix for the Wi-Fi vulnerability.

References

Kovacs, E. (2017, April 5). Wi-Fi Flaws Expose iPhone, Nexus Phones to Attacks. Retrieved from Security Week: http://www.securityweek.com/wi-fi-flaws-expose-iphone-nexus-phones-attacks