Earlier today (25th November 2021), a vulnerability was spotted in the AI and audio processing components in recently launched MediaTek chipsets. This vulnerability would’ve allowed apps to eavesdrop on users.
According to an AndroidPolice report, Check Point Research had discovered the vulnerability, which allows “local privilege escalation attack” from a third party application. To put things simply, an app loaded with the right code could possibly have gained access to AI and audio related information that it otherwise wouldn’t have had access to. Fortunately, the Taiwanese chipmaker fixed the issue before it was exploited. The company has even fixed every related vulnerabilities as of October 2021.
While the process to exploit this vulnerability was quite complicated, the issue would’ve given any apps to pass specific commands to the audio interface. This would’ve been a major issue considering MediaTek had a notable 43 percent market share in the smartphone process market as of the second quarter of this year. In other words, the company was the number one brand for smartphone chips in terms of shipments. So, the vulnerability could’ve been disastrous for the company. Although, the issue has reportedly been fixed back in October, so it is recommended that MediaTek users update their devices to the latest patches just to be on the safer side.
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