A major flaw has just been discovered in the Wi-Fi chips of a couple of smartphone models that potentially affect over a billion people. Reportedly, attackers are now capable of decrypting data that was sent to these handset models, even if the messages were encrypted in the first place.

The flaw in question has been traced back to Wi-Fi chips that have been manufactured by a particular company called Cypress Semiconductor and Broadcom. As the name suggests, the company deals with Wi-Fi components and Cypress had initially acquired Broadcom’s Wi-Fi operations back in 2016. The recently uncovered Wi-Fi flaw affects both the WPA2-Personal and WPA2-Enterprise protocols on the affected smartphones.

The list of devices that are affected is found to be in both iPhones and Android smartphones. Furthermore, they are also found to be affecting certain models of iPad from Apple, Amazon Echo, Kindle readers, and Wi-Fi routers manufactured by Asus and Huawei. The vulnerability was first uncovered by a Slovakian security firm named Eset, which has also dubbed it as KrØØk when reporting it earlier today (27th February 2020).

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As of right now, the manufacturers whose smartphones are affected have already started issuing patches to fix the issue, but it remains to be seen regarding the damage already done. Another difficulty being that the user might not read the crucial patch notes, so if your smartphones are one of the affected devices in the list down below, check for any pending software update and upgrade immediately.

• Amazon Echo 2nd gen
• Amazon Kindle 8th gen
• Apple iPad mini 2
• Apple iPhone 6
• Apple iPhone 6S
• Apple iPhone 8
• Apple iPhone XR
• Apple MacBook
• Apple iPad Air
• Google Nexus 5
• Google Nexus 6
• Google Nexus 6P
• Raspberry Pi 3
• Samsung Galaxy S4
• Samsung Galaxy S8
• Xiaomi Redmi 3S

Unfortunately, Eset stated that it has yet to test a lot of smartphones from other OEMs and there is a great chance of the vulnerability being more widespread. Many companies have yet to respond to the issue but so far, the above mentioned handset models are confirmed to have the issue. Similarly, the affected routers would also require the installation of the latest firmware with the required security patches to be secured.

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(Via)

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A newly discovered an android vulnerability that affects a wide range of devices from Google, Samsung, Xiaomi, LG, Huawei, and some other manufacturers.

The vulnerability was discovered by Google’s security group, Project Zero, last week and is already being exploited by attackers. According to the post published about the vulnerability, there is little or no customization required to root a phone that is infected.

There are speculations that the bug is being used by NSO, a security software firm based in Israel. However, a spokesperson for the company said: “NSO did not sell and will never sell exploits or vulnerabilities,”.

It was also reported that the bug was fixed in earlier versions 3.18, 4.4, and 4.9 of AOSP Android Kernel in December 2017 but has re-emerged in new versions.

Below is a list of affected devices:

• Pixel 2
• Huawei P20
• Redmi 5A
• Redmi Note 5
• Xiaomi Mi A1
• OPPO A3
• Moto Z3
• LG phones running Android Oreo
• Samsung Galaxy S7
• Samsung Galaxy S8
• Samsung Galaxy S9

The vulnerability needs to be exploited locally, so users are advised not to download apps from untrusted sources until an update that nullifies the threat has been rolled out.

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(Source: 1, 2)

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