14 DAY TRIAL // The entire debacle about security in the smartphone industry has just received another chapter and it doesn't look good for Android and iOS platforms.
First of all, it doesn't look good for Google and Android, as one of the most recent smartphones launched by the search giant has been compromised in less than 60 seconds.
During the PwnFest hacking competition, a team of white-hat hackers from China managed to compromise Google's Pixel smartphone in under 1 minute. The team called Qihoo 360 managed to achieve the hack using a zero-day vulnerability to remotely install code on the smartphone.
Upon installing the new code, both the Google Play store and Chrome for Android displayed the message “Pwned by 360 Alpha Team.”
Since this was a competition for white-hackers, the achievement did not go unrewarded. Google offered Qihoo 360 a prize of $120,000 just for being able to hack its Pixel smartphone.
Those of you who own the Pixel phone shouldn't be worried though, as Google announced that the exploit found was patched within 24 hours of the event and the changes have already been pushed into the stable version of Chrome.
Safari, Microsoft Edge and Adobe Flash fell, too
However, the Chinese team eventually got home with no less than $520,000 in cash prizes after demonstrating additional vulnerabilities in Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 and another exploit on Adobe Flash.
On a side note, iOS fans shouldn't be laughing at all, as reputable Chinese hackers Pangu Team and JH managed to hack Apple's Safari browser in just 20 seconds, thus earning no less than $80,000 in prizes.
The Chinese team used a root privilege escalation zero-day to compromise the Safari browser so fast, but Apple is likely to patch the exploit in their next update.
So, no matter what smartphone you own, there will always be ways to hack into someone else's data, it's just a matter of time before hackers find these methods.
