Media File Jacking Threats and Protections

Abstract

Media File Jacking (MFJ) is one security threat that affects media file usages within apps. Media files include image files, voice/audio files, video files and document files like pdf, docs, excel sheets, text files, etc. and these files easily find its place within our devices. The primary symptom of a Media File Jacking attack is that it will manipulate the media files, on transferring between users or apps. This type of malwares mainly targets mobile devices. The researchers from Symantec reported that this vulnerability has already found its way into the two top social media messaging apps namely, WhatsApp and Telegram. Not just limited to this, media file jacking can easily target mobile functioning’s whilst managing affected media files and its managed media chat apps. This analysis in detail tries to understand the vulnerabilities that devices are left exposed to via Media file jacking and how can protect Android based mobile devise with the help of existing, upcoming, configurable or programmable features. We try to cover in detail on i.) What Media file jacking attack is? ii.) How this vulnerability is created? iii.) Under which scenario this will happen iv.) What are the different types of attacks? iv.) What are the implications of this attack? v.) what are precautionary measures and how we can mark safe our mobile devices from this attack. This study mainly help to Android media app users and app develops to get a glance about the precautionary measures from media file jacking attack.