Turning Off And Turning On Your Phone Could Help Thwart Phone Hackers

Want to protect your phone from hackers? According to the NSA, one simple trick that will take you about a minute would be to simply turn your phone off and then back on again, essentially restarting your phone. This is based on a “Mobile Device Best Practices” guide that the agency released last year.

Some of you might be wondering how does rebooting a phone stop hackers in their tracks and thwart their attempts? While it’s not a panacea for all hacking attempts, the idea is that rebooting a phone helps you thwart attacks that rely on in-memory payloads. This is a technique that some attackers like to exploit and it relies on the fact that many of us do not reboot our phones.

This is because rebooting our phone can disrupt these types of attacks, but like we said, since not many people do that, this type of hacks can be exploited for long periods of time. Of course, this is just one of the many ways that the NSA is advising people on how they can protect their mobile devices, but it’s one that might be worth looking into.

After all, it only takes a minute or two to shut your phone down and to start it back up, and if that could potentially thwart these type of in-memory payload attacks, then why not? Some other advice that the NSA has given include disabling Bluetooth when not in use, avoiding connecting to public WiFi, disabling location services when not in need, and so on.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Hack, Security