The Hacker News - Cybersecurity News and Analysis: kernel hacker

How to Hack an Android device? It is possibly one of the most frequently asked questions on the Internet. Although it's not pretty simple to hack Android devices and gadgets, sometimes you just get lucky to find a backdoor access. Thanks to Allwinner, a Chinese ARM system-on-a-chip maker, which has recently been caught shipping a version of Linux Kernel with an incredibly simple and easy-to-use built-in backdoor. Chinese fabless semiconductor company Allwinner is a leading supplier of application processors that are used in many low-cost Android tablets, ARM-based PCs, set-top boxes, and other electronic devices worldwide. Simple Backdoor Exploit to Hack Android Devices All you need to do to gain root access of an affected Android device is… Send the text " rootmydevice " to any undocumented debugging process. The local privileges escalation  backdoor code for debugging ARM-powered Android devices managed to make its way in shipped firmware after fir

More than a Billion of Android devices are at risk of a severe vulnerability in Qualcomm Snapdragon chip that could be exploited by any malicious application to gain root access on the device. Security experts at Trend Micro are warning Android users of some severe programming blunders in Qualcomm's kernel-level Snapdragon code that if exploited, can be used by attackers for gaining root access and taking full control of your device. Gaining root access on a device is a matter of concern, as it grants attackers access to admin level capabilities, allowing them to turn your device against you to snap your pictures, and snoop on your personal data including accounts' passwords, emails, messages and photos. The company's own website notes that Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs (systems on a chip) power more than a Billion smart devices, including many Internet of Things (IoTs) as of today. Thus, the issue puts many people at risk of being attacked. Although Google has pus

A new critical zero-day vulnerability has been discovered in the Linux kernel that could allow attackers to gain root level privileges by running a malicious Android or Linux application on an affected device. The critical Linux kernel flaw ( CVE-2016-0728 ) has been identified by a group of researchers at a startup named Perception Point. The vulnerability was present in the code since 2012, and affects any operating system with Linux kernel 3.8 and higher , so there are probably tens of millions of computers, both 32-bit and 64-bit, exposed to this flaw. However, the most bothersome part is that the problem affects Android versions KitKat and higher , which means about 66 percent of all Android devices are also exposed to the serious Linux kernel flaw. Impact of the Zero-Day Vulnerability An attacker would only require local access to exploit the flaw on a Linux server. If successfully exploited, the vulnerability can allow attackers to get root access