Smartphones working around the world with a Broadcom Wi-Fi chip are vulnerable to cyber attacks say, experts. It is estimated that more than 1 billion Android and iOS smart phones are at risk due to the said vulnerability. But experts say that the Broadcom has already initiated steps to patch the vulnerability, thus averting a major cyber attack.
Security researcher Nitay Artenstein developed a malicious code which could be transmitted through air, probing nearby devices. Once a device with the BCM43xx family Wi-Fi chipset gets detected, the code could rewrite the firmware that controls the chip, allowing the attacker to kick off a chain reaction technique.
Disclosing some astonishing details about the hack at the conference, Nitay said that the research was an attempt to demonstrate what such a cyber attack could be and such a bug looks like.
Artenstein said that some geeks from Europe have already exploited this flaw and took hold of some smart phones in France last month. But he added that the percentage of affected phones was negligible and confirmed that there were no fresh reports after the attack.
The exposure circles around the fact that Broadcom chips, unlike kernels on iOS and Android, are not isolated by either ASLR or DEP and this is putting all those phones using the Wi-Fi chipset into trouble.
Recently, Apple issued an update to all its iOS 10.3.3 version users to eliminate the risk of Wi-Fi based exploit. The company also added in its announcement that all the users using devices which were released after iPhone 5; including iPADs should go for the update.
