10-year-old hacker presents at DefCon Kids
The 10-year-old hacker who goes by the nickname CyFi has revealed a zero-day exploit in games found on the Android and iOS mobile phone platforms.
The hack, which has been verified by independent researchers, was discovered when the young hacker found the pace of farm-style games on mobiles platforms boring.
Cyfi spoke to news website Cnet shortly before her presentation, and said, “It was hard to make progress in the game, because it took so long for things to grow. So I thought, ‘Why don’t I just change the time?” Manually setting the time on the phone or tablet device would force the game further along that it really was, which lead to the discovery of the exploit.
Games do have detection methods to prevent this sort of hack, though CyFi has seemingly found a way around these. Disconnecting the devices Wi-Fi signal is one such step, when the other is to increase the time in minor increments.
CyFi has not yet revealed which games are affected by the exploit due to “reasonable disclosure”, which gives the game vendors time to address the exploit before details go public.
Read the full story over at: Cnet.
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