If you’re a OnePlus owner, there’s a pretty good chance you’re now aware of a vulnerability that affects a number of handsets. We reported on the event, and at the time, OnePlus hadn’t issued a response to the matter, which was alarming considering that it had been warned about this problem for some time.
Well, with the situation exposed to the public and the problem gaining tons of traction across the internet, OnePlus must have finally been motivated to address the issue. The brand issued a statement to 9to5Google regarding the situation, acknowledging the situation and also offering a timeline on when a solution would be available.
Quick to take action in the public eye
So when can OnePlus users expect an update for their devices? The brand stated that it would roll out an update starting mid-October. It didn’t go into detail about how many of its devices are affected or just how serious this problem is, but there’s a pretty good chance that we’ll get this information once the software fix goes live next month.
As you can imagine, something like this can be quite damaging to a brand, and OnePlus wants to do its best to make this go away as soon as possible. In our original report, Rapid7 were the ones that originally uncovered this problem, and while the brand reached out to OnePlus, they didn’t get a response, which prompted them to go public with its findings.
During its testing, it found that several OnePlus devices were exposed to a vulnerability that “allows any application installed on the device to read SMS/MMS data and metadata from the system-provided Telephony provider.” What made this worse is that it can happen without any interaction from the user, and without them knowing.
As you can imagine, this is quite serious, as there is the potential to have customer data exposed. And as stated before, while Rapid7 did test a number of devices, it believes that this problem could be more widespread, making it unclear just how many OnePlus devices are affected.
It’s unclear how many devices will get this fix, but there’s a possibility that this vulnerability could affect the entire OnePlus lineup. Hopefully, OnePlus will be more clear in its findings when the fix is released next month. Until then, OnePlus owners will have remain patient.