Smartphones of a popular brand turned out to be unsafe

Security engineers have discovered a vulnerability in Google Pixel smartphones that allows hackers to view photos. This is reported by TechRadar.

According to media journalists, programmers Simon Aarons and David Buchanan drew attention to the problem. Experts found that a special system flaw allowed images edited on the brand’s smartphones to be sent in an insecure manner, which made it possible to restore their original state.

As an example, the authors cited photographs of credit cards or documents, some of the information on which is hidden using a photo editor. It turned out that if you send these pictures through smartphones of the popular Google Pixel brand, the recipient can restore them and gain access to personal information.

The vulnerability has been identified as CVE-2023-21036, and Google has also released an update to fix the problem. However, Aarons and Buchanan noticed that only the brand’s new smartphones received the update. So, on Google Pixel 4 and earlier devices in the series, the problem persisted. TechRadar journalists turned to Google for clarification, but did not receive a prompt response.

Earlier, Google Project Zero engineers found a vulnerability in Samsung smartphones related to the Exynos chip. Experts noted that the system flaw allowed attackers to access the victim’s device using a phone number.