Old RAZR phones vulnerable to ‘MMS of Death’

If you are still rockin’ an early-model Motorola RAZR, you might want to upgrade your firmware.

Security researchers from ZeroDay Initiative have discovered a firmware bug in early RAZR models that allows specially-created JPEG images to execute arbitrary code.

The ‘poison’ JPEG can be sent to the phone via MMS.  If the MMS is accepted, a bug in the part of the image viewer that reads EXIF image metadata (the part that records the date, camera type etc.).

Although there have been reported sightings of this kind of hack in the wild, Motorola are recommending that you update your firmware via their website.

Interestingly, though, the vulnerability was reportedly discovered almost a year ago.  Why has it taken so long for the public to get to know about it?

Motorola had this to say about the problem:  “Although the possibility of this vulnerability occurring is very remote and would only occur in unique circumstances, Motorola proactively corrected it in all new device releases.”

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