Stagefright Targets The Android Platform

Ever experienced stagefright before? I suppose imagining the audience to be naked might help, but when we talk about Stagefright: The Malware, then it is a different story altogether. If you are an Android user, then you might want to arm yourself with more information concerning this piece of text-message based malware, so hopefully your vendor or device manufacturer will be able to send out a fix to prevent this malware from causing havoc on your device.

Basically, Stagefright works this way – it has the ability to attack any Android smartphone, tablet, or other device that has Android 2.2 or higher. This is a very wide range of devices – more than a billion Android-powered devices, making it among the worst Android vulnerabilities discovered to date.

Stagefright will be sent to you in the form of a multimedia text message, perhaps a short video of kittens playing via Google’s Hangouts app, and that’s it – the attack will begin. You do not even need to open the text message app. Google had already been informed of the problem in April, where “Google acted promptly and applied the patches to internal code branches within 48 hours.”

While Google has provided the Android source code patches, it is the responsibility of smartphone carriers and original equipment manufacturers (OEM)s ensure that updated firmware carrying these source code patches are sent out – and so far, none of the major Android OEMs or carriers have made any plans to deliver the patch, which is a scary thought. The safest thing to do now? Block any and all text messages that arrive from unknown senders.