A million 5G smartphones were vulnerable to hackers

Specialists from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) have discovered a critical vulnerability in more than 700 models of 5G smartphones. This was reported by TechRadar.

The problems described by experts are collectively called 5Ghoul. The vulnerability allows you to connect to a smartphone by replacing the original base station with a fake one. According to the authors of the report, the vulnerability was found on 710 smartphone models that have modems supporting fifth-generation communications from Qualcomm and MediaTek. The list also includes Apple devices.

To hack, attackers need to be at a certain distance from the smartphone. It turned out that to hack, hackers do not need to have any secret information – know the data about the SIM card or the characteristics of the base station.

Qualcomm and MediaTek have already released patches for many of the vulnerabilities, but patches will be released to endpoint devices later. So, Android users will receive the patch before the end of the year, iPhone owners will most likely have to wait for the update to appear in 2024.

At the beginning of December, Binarly specialists spoke about a family of vulnerabilities that can be used to hack almost any computer. Experts said that the malware runs early in the device’s boot process, allowing it to bypass most security mechanisms.