Sometimes we tend to take our technology for granted and assume that it should just work. However, it isn’t always the case as researchers have recently found out. According to a report out of South Korea (via Engadget), it seems that at least 36 new security flaws have been discovered within LTE.
Since LTE is what our phones, tablets, and even cars connect to, it sounds like it could be pretty serious. These vulnerabilities opens up the possibility of being hacked, like being eavesdropped on, being disconnected, or having the data controlled by someone else. It also seems that this issue is not necessarily consistent, meaning that different carriers could have different flaws, so there is no one solution to fix everything.
The researchers plan on sharing their findings at a conference later this May. They are also sharing the tool they created to help find these flaws with carriers and device makers. This is to help them identify the flaws by themselves and also to potentially come up with a fix for them. So far we haven’t really heard any reports of these flaws being exploited, so while they are out there, the good news is that no one has figured out a way to take advantage of them yet.
Hopefully, a fix will be released in time to prevent anything untoward from happening.