Millions Of Smartphones With Mediatek Processors Can Be Hacked: Find Out If Your Smartphone Is Safe Or Not?

We all know Mediatek and its famous chipsets that are used very commonly in the android smartphones of today. But for those unaware, MediaTek is a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company that provides chips to numerous electronic devices.

However, we have a bad news – A dangerous vulnerability has been detected in the chips of Mediatek which might expose the devices in which it is installed will be vulnerable to serious security risks. 

Which are these chipsets that have been affected by this vulnerability? Let’s find out!

Vulnerability Detected In Mediatek Chipset 

This vulnerability will expose the device that uses it to grave risks, especially related to safety. 

But, Mediatek had released a fix for the vulnerability way back in 2019, which was not installed by all smartphone manufacturers in their devices, which created the issue to increase. Unlike Google, Mediatek cannot enforce this measure on the smartphone manufacturers. However, this fix was immediately implemented by Amazon.

Things took a turn for the worse when this vulnerability was used by a member of the XDA for positive reasons. All he did was try to gain root permissions on the Amazon Fire Tablet in which he was successful. In fact, he gained these permissions by finding a way around the unlocking of the bootloader.

Going back a bit farther, the bootloader unlock on devices powered by Android is quite critical when it comes to safety. It allows signature verification into the boot of the OS, which in turn makes it possible to apply and comply with the security model designed by Google.

If one can unlock the bootloader, root permissions are easy to gain. While this has a pro to it, of modding possibilities, it also makes the device open to potential risks. 

Which Chipsets Will This Vulnerability Affect?

Here is a complete list of all the chipsets that will be affected by the vulnerability:

MT6735, MT6737, MT6738, MT6739, MT6750, MT6753, MT6755, MT6757, MT6758, MT6761, MT6762, MT6763, MT6765, MT6771, MT6779, MT6795, MT6797, MT6799, MT8163, MT8167, MT8173, MT8176, MT8183, MT6580 and MT6595.

As per reports, it can be used on the Linux kernel versions 3.18, 4.4, 4.9 and 4.14 with the Android versions Nougat, Oreo and Pie.

However, the good news is that this software patch has been included in the March 2020 Android Security update.