10-year old hacker finds flaw in mobile games
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Posted in Security, 8th August 2011 11:56 GMT
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A 10-year-old hacker has won the admiration of her adult peers for finding a previously unknown vulnerability in games on iOS and Android devices.
The young girl, who has adopted the hacker handle CyFi, discovered the timing related bug after she got bored with the slow progress of a FarmVille-style games. For example, crops in planting corn take at least 10 hours to mature.
But changing the clock time on a phone or tablet fools the game into instantly ripening crops. Some of the affected games attempt to detect such shenanigans but by changing the time by small increments or disconnecting devices CyFi managed to circumvent these counter-measures.
CyFi has informed affected vendors of her findings but is withholding most of their names, giving them time to develop a fix.
The 10-year-old presented her findings last weekend in Las Vegas at the very first DefCon Kids, the new pint-sized campaign conference to DefCon. ®
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