Pre-teen spills the beans about time-traveling inside your phone
Who knew hackers could be so darned cute? But it's not just 10-year-old Californian innovator, artist, and athlete known as CyFi's looks (and suave shades) that have people talking. She also appeared at the?DefCon Kids hacker conference over the weekend to give a presentation titled "Apps ? A Traveler of Both Time and Space (And What I Learned About Zero-Days and Responsible Disclosure)." In the talk, she revealed a flaw in the programming of both Android and iOS apps that allows players to cheat at some games.
Like many youngsters (and not-so-youngsters?), CyFi liked playing?farming games on her phone, but didn't like how long it took to grow things in the game. So like any good hacker, she found a way around it. The exploit CyFi discovered actually uses a technique that's almost as old as computer gaming itself: changing the device's internal clock to alter the time in the game, and make it faster to do things that normally take a long time. This is called a "zero-day flaw", and it's not quite as simple as just changing the clock; developers did plan and guard against anyone doing something that obvious.
How exactly do you exploit the zero-day flaw, then, and which games are vulnerable? Also like any responsible hacker, CyFi isn't telling. Instead, she's giving the companies that create the games a chance to close the loophole and fix the vulnerability she found before more malicious minds can take advantage of it.
[Image credit:?Seth Rosenblatt/CNET]
PC World via?Dvice
Post by Katherine Gray
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