Android weaknesses or vulnerabilities are surfacing up regularly over the past couple of years. These weaknesses are exposed by the security companies. But after this the scares just fade away, replaced by other alerts that has become the norm in the Android Ecosystem.
StageFright is different. This vulnerability affects almost 95% of the Android devices and can be exploited with a simple MMS message.A specially designed piece of malware could spread like wildfire by tapping into the contact list of every infected device. Perhaps that’s why Google and major Android OEM have actually tried to offer a coordinated response.
The company that discovered the StageFright is Zimperium, they have published a simple app that checks whether your phone is exposed to any of the vulnerabilities or not. If you want to check that whether your phone is exposed to StageFright, simply install the app and tap on begin analysis and then the app will show which vulnerabilities affects your phone. The app does nothing apart from detecting the vulnerabilities of your device.
In case your phone has StageFright do the following things:
1) Stay Calm, don’t run here and there.
2) Disable auto retrieval MMS, as vulnerability relies on modified videos.
3) Consider switching to messaging app that has been updated with some level of protection against Stagefright, like Textra.
4) Consider switching to custom roms like CyanogenMod (the latest CM nightlies are patched against StageFright).
5) Don’t open the unknown MMS’s.
6) Update your messaging apps and check for the updates for your devices.
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