Does your Camera App spying on you?

Highlights: A security research agency has identified security vulnerabilities in the Camera apps of phone manufactured by Google and Samsung that allows hackers to actively spyon users and access their phone's data.

According to a report by Cyber Security research firm Checkmarx gave hackers a broad set of permissions that not only allowed them to click photos and record videos but also get detailed information about user's location. This bug found in Google Pixel and Samsung phones. The firm wrote on its blog:

Additionally, we found that certain attack scenarios enable malicious actors to circumvent various storage permission policies, giving them access to stored videos and photos, as well as GPS metadata embedded in photos, to locate the user bu taking a photo or video and parsing the proper EXIF data.

This bug allows hackers to control the Camera app in Google Pixel and Samsung phones such that they could listen to all of user's conversations and even manipulate the camera remotely by installing an infected app on it. The user even doesn't know anything about it.

Google regularly releases updates to its mobile operating system fixings bugs and vulnerabilities that could leave Android phones vulnerable to hackers or make it difficult to use their phones and the good news is here that Google has already found and released a patch to fix the bug. It also made a security patch available to the other affected smartphone makers to fix the bug. This means that if you have been updating your phone regularly, your phone's data should be safe and sound.

Source: IndiaToday