Security exploit found in Mediatek devices causes them to involuntarily reset when receiving an SMS message

A bizarre bug has been found in a selection of devices which can cause them to immediately soft-reset when they simply receive a text message.

The smartphone handsets in question are all powered by Mediatek processors. The SMS messages which cause the issue all happen to contain an ‘=’ symbol within them. Alcatel One Touch, Acer, Wiko and Fair Phone models are amongst the handsets reporting the issue, with a variety of Wiko models being the most problematic.

Whilst this problem may seem fairly innocuous, it’s a worryingly simple flaw to exploit. Anyone with any sort of malicious intent to trigger it with a bare minimum of effort.

The specific handsets known to be affected so far are  Fair Phone, the Acer Liquid E 2 Duo and the following Alcatel One Touch models: 997D, Pop C3 (4033D), S-Pop (4030D), Star (6010D), Idol X and Idol Ultra.

Interestingly, the issue only occurs when the SMS is received in the device’s default messaging app. Using a third-party messenger such as Google Hangouts seems to negate the problem.

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