A new simple vulnerability loophole was found in the Smartphones with MediaTek processors and running on Android. These smartphones can be remotely rebooted by sending a simple SMS to the device. There are more than two billion smartphone users around the world and this count is increasing drastically these days. Smartphones are the next big target for the Hackers. One of the blogger recently found a major vulnerability in the Smartphones powered by MediaTek chipset and running on Android.

By using this simple trick anyone can reboot an Android smartphone powered by MediaTek chipset remotely. The device can be rebooted by simply sending a symbol " = " as an SMS to it. In MediaTek Chipset language this symbol means shutdown and reboot. I tried this SMS hack on a Micromax Android smartphone powered by MediaTek processor, The smartphone got rebooted whenever an SMS with " = " symbol is received. Many of the brands like Xolo, Micromax, Karbon, Lava are using MediaTek chipsets in their devices. This will become a serious issue for many of the users using MediaTek smartphones.

To protect their smartphones from this hack users have to download and install a new sms app from playstore by completely bypassing the default messaging app of the smartphone.