Did you know that another operating system is hiding in your smartphone?

Did you know that no matter if you’re an Android user, or you prefer iOS or Windows, there’s another operating system that you can’t see? That’s right. You might decide which preferable OS will run in your device because you like its interface or its applications, but inside your device there’s a completely different OS.

Known as real-time OS, it works separately from your main operating system and it handles the cellular radio in your smartphone. There is one for Bluetooth, another for your Wi-Fi connectivity and certainly more than one for your cell- provider. This OS runs on the baseband processor and it’s completely unreliable when it comes to security.

Unfortunately, it trusts all the data without checking it which would be a serious issue compromising your device if the cell tower that sends this data ever got hacked, but the good news is this is unlikely to happen. Nevertheless, any cell tower is a network to another which will even help any attack spreading easily on the network especially now when users are provided with the so called micro-cells. Such cell towers are usually provided by the carriers in order to enhance the radios when the traditional cell tower runs on low signal, and they could make a real mess in case hackers create exploits on a wide-scale.

And that’s not all! According to OS News, this baseband processor that runs the radio-handling real-time OS, is actually the master processor that enslaves your Snapdragon or NVIDIA, on the contrary of everything we’ve ever believed in. Yes, your application processor apparently isn’t the primary one. In addition, to sum all the information, we store all out contacts, passwords and personal information onto devices that run a fill operating system that is powered by a primary ARM processor and due to the fact it unquestionably trusts any data it receives, it lacks any protection against hackers.

So far, cases of hacking personal information via cell towers haven’t been reported and let’s pray they never will.

Source: OS News