Android phones can be hacked with a MMS

A security researcher has warned that the vast majority of Android phones can be hacked by sending them a specially crafted multimedia message (MMS). about 95 percent of Android devices worldwide are vulnerable. The only thing a hacker needs to compromise a handset is his phone number.

Joshua Drake from mobile security firm Zimperium has developed an exploit for the bug, named "Stagefright" after a vulnerable media library in the operating system's open source code. It is concidered to be one of the worst Android security holes discovered to date. It affects Android versions 2.2 and on.

The researcher also informed Google - the company behind Android - when he first discovered the vulnerability in April and supplied patches that would fix the problem.

In order to protect themselves, Android phone owners can change their default message application, especially if they use Hangouts, because this particular application automatically retrieves multimedia messages. For those who don't want to change Hangouts as their default messaging app, turning off Hangouts' ability to automatically retrieve multimedia messages is also a good idea.

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