10 year old girl shows off security flaw in mobile gaming at Defcon for Kids

A ten-year old girl going by the name of CyFi has uncovered a security flaw in mobile gaming for both iOS and Android devices. This security flaw was shown off at the Defcon for Kids event that coincided with Defcon which was held over the weekend here in Las Vegas and just ended.

The flaw, which allows for someone to bypass cheating mechanics in place inside a game, was shown off over the weekend. CyFi isn't releasing the full details of the security flaw until the companies who she has contacted come up with a fix for it. When it comes to games where time is used to help progression in-game, specifically in farming type games where you have to wait for things to grow, using this flaw allowed for speeding up said growth of vegetables.

The flaw can be done by turning off WiFi and then slowly moving the clock on the handset forward in small increments. This would bypass any anti-cheating measures within the game(s) and allow you to grow your items faster by way of outside code perhaps. By doing this slow forwarding of time, it opened up loopholes which would allow someone to execute code to effect the game. Like we mentioned though, details about the security flaw and what other things could be possible done with it have been kept rather quiet until the affected companies come out with a fix. When they do CyFi will make the details public.

Not bad for a 10-year old child. We have used similar methods to get updates to our Android device faster when they begin to get pushed out although it doesn't involved the use of outside code. We just forward the date to about a week and then go to check system updates. It seems to work sometimes.

Website Referenced: PC Pro