Android Camera exploit opens doors for hackers to your privacy

Anybody who’s using a Android smartphone right now should be worried especially those who are updating their devices less often as a team of security researchers found a bug in Google’s default camera app and from other smartphone manufacturer devices as well.

The problem is that a hacker could use the newly found exploit to access the device camera remotely without the users knowledge. The Security Research team found the bug by accessing the device storage to bypass Android’s permission thus, gives access to photos and videos and eventually the camera app installed on the device.

By default, Google asks users to gives permission to apps that gets access to different functions and features from the device and with a rogue app, the team was able to bypass those steps without the users intent. With few line of codes, an attacker can gain control over the installed camera app and will be able to take photos and video without the user knowing.

Besides that, in certain scenario shoan attacker can also gain control on the device storage and GPS metadata stored in photos’ and videos’ EXIF.

The newly found camera exploit was demonstrated not only of Google Pixel phones but from other manufacturers as well with Samsung being named particularly. However, that doesn’t mean that they are limited to these two particular brands.

Google and Samsung already addressed the issue with a patch back a few months ago. Google also contacted other OEM’s about the exploit and distributed the patch to update existing Android devices in the wild.

The problem however is that, there are devices that doesn’t usually follow the usual default update process and could that put them at risk. If you have an Android device that’s not been updated for quite a while, Our advice is have it updated to the latest available software update as they may just have the need patch to make your phone a little more safer to use.