What happens when holes perfect for spyware are found in the engine room of millions of Qualcomm-based phones? Let’s find out

From theregister.com

DEF CON In July, the makers of millions of smartphones powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon system-on-chips received mitigation recommendations to address a bevy of security flaws in their products, all introduced by Qualcomm’s technology.

Those software-level vulnerabilities, which apparently affect potentially more than 40 per cent of cellphones worldwide, were outlined this week at the now-virtual DEF CON hacking conference.

Infosec experts at Check Point Research on Thursday reported finding more than 400 programming blunders in the code used to control the Digital Signal Processing (DSP) cores in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip families. These engines accelerate the processing of images, audio, and other information in a staggering number of Android cellphones.

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