The number of people worrying about cheater’s paradise Ashley Madison being hacked and their information being exposed: 30 million. The number of people possibly affected by a new Android hack: 950 million (considering 950 million phones worldwide are at risk.) That’s around 95% of the world’s Androids.
The hack, which allows a hacker to completely control your phone, is made possible through a text message—even if you don’t open it. See, an Android processes media files it receives (pictures, audio, video) before you even open a message. And as cybersecurity company Zimperium, who discovered the problem, explained, the file with the bug can infect the phone the second it’s received. Zimperium said the bug affects phones with Android software of the past five years.
Zimperium reportedly told Google about the problem in its software early April and suggested a solution, with Google promising a fix. But after Google failed to distribute a fix after 90 days, the time allotted to companies when these things happen, Zimperium decided to break the news.
A Google spokeswoman said of the situation,
