Vulnerability affects high-end Android phones from Google, Samsung, LG, Xiaomi, and OnePlus

Qualcomm has, however, said that it issued fixes to OEMs for this vulnerability last year.

The debate on whether Android is better than iOS or otherwise is not going to end anytime soon. And it looks like those advocating for iOS have got a new point to their debate. Security researchers have found a critical vulnerability in Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered smartphones that could allow any malicious app to patch the software and, consequently, gain access to the call and text history and record conversations. But Qualcomm has confirmed that it “made fixes available to OEMs” last year in December, and asked users to upgrade their phones. According to researchers at Check Point Research, this vulnerability was alarming for nearly all Android phones, including the premium ones from Google, OnePlus, LG, Samsung, and Xiaomi, because Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors are the ones powering a big chunk of them. The researchers found the vulnerability in the Qualcomm Modem Interface (QMI) software, which is proprietary protocol devices use to communicate between software components of the modem and other peripheral systems, such as cameras, fingerprint sensor. It could allow hackers to patch the software dynamically and bypass the security on the module.