 Millions of mobile devices from eleven smartphone vendors are vulnerable to attacks carried out using AT commands, a team of security researchers has discovered. AT (ATtention) commands or the Hayes command set, is a collection of short-string commands developed in the early 1980s that were designed to be transmitted via phone lines and control modems. Different AT command strings can be merged together to tell a modem to dial, hang up, or change connection parameters. Unknown to the common user is that modern smartphones include a basic modem component inside them, which allows the smartphone to connect to the Internet via its telephony function, and more. While international telecommunications bodies have standardized basic AT commands, dictating a list that all smartphones must support, vendors have also added custom AT command sets to their own devices —commands which can control some pretty dangerous phone features such as the touchscreen interface, the device's camera, and more. In massive and groundbreaking research, a team of eleven scientists from the University of Florida, Stony Brook University, and Samsung Research America, have looked into what types of AT commands are currently supported on modern Android devices. The research team analyzed over 2,000 Android firmware images from eleven Android OEMs such as ASUS, Google, HTC, Huawei, Lenovo, LG, LineageOS, Motorola, Samsung, Sony, and ZTE. They say they discovered that these devices support over 3,500 different types of AT commands, some of which grant access to very dangerous functions. Videos and more are posted on OUR FORUM.  T-Mobile USA announced a security breach late last night. The company says its cyber-security team discovered and shut down unauthorized access to its customers' data on Monday, August 20. The telco says an attacker was exfiltrating personal data such as customer names, billing ZIP codes, phone numbers, email addresses, account numbers, and account types (prepaid or postpaid). T-Mobile said the hacker (or hackers) did not gain access to passwords, social security numbers, or any financial information. Impacted customers will receive an SMS, letter in the mail, or a phone call to notify them. The US telco says it informed law enforcement authorities about the breach. A T-Mobile spokesperson told Motherboard that less than 3% of its customer base was affected. T-Mobile reported 75.62 million customers at the end of Q2 2018. That would put the breach at around 3.9 million customers, still, a considerable number. As some T-Mobile users have pointed out, even if the hackers did not get their hands on any financial data or passwords, the breach makes it easier for the attacker to port (SIM swap) numbers. More details posted on OUR FORUM.  According to the latest reports from AdDuplex, Microsoft’s latest entrant to the Surface family, the Surface Go now holds a market share of 1.24% of among the Surface devices. Microsoft which launched the Surface Go device on August 2nd in the US market enters the list of Surface devices and is now placed between the Surface Laptop and Surface Studio. Surface Pro 4 still remains the most popular Surface device beating other two Surface Pro models. The Surface Pro 4 currently holds a market share of around 33% with Surface Pro 3 and Surface Pro at 18% and 17% respectively. Microsoft launched the Surface Go keeping in mind the education sector with the device featuring a 10″ display and offering 7th Generation Intel Pentium Gold Processor 4415Y with 4 GB and 8 GB RAM options. The Surface Go has been termed as the most affordable device among the Surface family with the device priced at $399. The device comes with Windows 10 in S Mode pre-installed and you can get a full Windows 10 experience when upgraded from S Mode. AdDuplex has also shared some new data about the Windows popularity for the month of August 2018. The current data shows the percentage of devices running the Windows 10 April Update. Graphics and more is posted on OUR FORUM. |
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