Frightened Of The Stagefright Vulnerability? Companies Are Rolling Out Patches

Remember the Stagefright exploit that was brought to Android users’ consciousness just recently? Verizon, as well as some OEM’s, are now pushing updates for some of the units in their portfolio.

Verizon was reported to have pushed patches for the Google Nexus 7. Meanwhile, here are some of the Android device makers who have created fixes for the Stagefright vulnerability:

-Google released system images containing the patch for the models: Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 7, Nexus 9, and Nexus 10. Monthly security updates will also be released for the Nexus line.

-Motorola’s models ranging from Moto E to the newest Moto X, were given the patch. According to Android Central, all models released between these aforementioned models will receive the patch as well. Motorola has sent out these patches to US carriers around August 10th.

-HTC has announced that all their over the air and security updates will contain fixes for the Stagefright vulnerability starting August.

-Cyanogen announced that their stripped-down ROMs have been patched, starting with CM12.0. The 12.1 “nightlies” or beta versions will also contain the patch. Their older ROMs have also been patched. They made the announcement on their Google Plus account on July 28th.

Google has also patched its Hangouts and Messenger apps.

With this new update describing how Google is working with the OEM’s and the telco carriers on mitigating the Stagefright vulnerability, hopefully users won’t be affected by the security loophole.

Meanwhile, it would be good to remember that most security vulnerabilities get to wreak havoc with the user’s personal device habits. So to ensure that the Stagefright vulnerability won’t be an active inconvenience for you, either disable your MMS if you don’t use it anyway, or never open MMS attachments, if you weren’t expecting files anyway. With media-rich communication and messaging apps, filesharing apps, and even multimedia attachments for email, it would be a wonder why you’d still use MMS anyway.

The Stagefright exploit was discovered by Zimperium, a mobile security firm. Zimperium is the company behind enterprise security solutions zIPS, zCONSOLE and zANTI. Zimperium has headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel, as well as San Francisco, California, USA.