Meet 'Stagefright', the worst Android vulnerability in mobile OS history

A team of mobile security researchers claims that about 950 million Android smartphones and tablets across the globe are subject to a critical vulnerability. According to their report, attackers can use this vulnerability, nicknamed Stagefright after the source of the issue, to take control of your device through a malicious MMS.

The vulnerability seems to be caused by insecure code contained within Stagefright, which has been Android's multimedia library since Android 2.2 FroYo came out in May 2010. Since Stagefright has been used for so many Android versions, the researchers claim that 95% of all Android devices currently out there manifest this vulnerability, but devices running pre-Jelly Bean versions of Android, or about 15% of active Android devices, are the most vulnerable. The researchers who have discovered the vulnerability claim that 'Stagefright' is "the worst Android vulnerabilities [sic] discovered to date".

According to researchers at Zimperium Mobile Security, attackers can get an Android device to execute code remotely by sending an MMS which the Android system believes to contain a video. In some of the most vulnerable scenarios (devices running pre-Jellybean Android versions), the user doesn't even have to open the MMS for the hack to work, and skilled attackers could also remove the MMS once the damage has been done.