Stagefright Vulnerability Detector App Now Available on Google Play

Zimperium, the security firm which discovered Android's Stagefright vulnerability in July, has now released an app that allows users to check whether their device has the said vulnerability.

At the ongoing Black Hat 2015 security conference, the researchers at Zimperium revealed their free app that anyone can download to check if their device is vulnerable.

To speed up the mitigation process, the company has launched "Zimperium Handset Alliance." It says that it is working with manufacturers and carriers to help them quickly roll out patches. It noted that 25 key smartphone manufacturers have already joined the Alliance.

The company also maintains an app called zIPS that is aimed at enterprise customers. Zimperium also noted that it recently teamed up with Samsung's Knox team to create an app for older devices that would disable automatic retrieval of MMS.

Stagefright Detector is a very light app app and supports a large pool of devices running Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread and up. In our brief testing, Stagefright Detector merely took five seconds to complete its analysis and show us the result.

Interestingly, security firm Lookout has also released an app that helps users detect whether their device is infected with Stagefright, what appears to be the one of the biggest vulnerabilities on Android reported in the recent times. Lookout's Stagefright detector app, which is available on the Google Play store, is a light and straight-forward app too.

Stagefright is an open source media player that is used by about 95 percent of Android devices, or about 950 million devices. Zimperium reported a vulnerability in Stagefright late last month that, if exploited, could let attackers to take control of an Android device by sending a specially crafted media file delivered by an MMS message. Google and Samsung announced on Wednesday that they will now offer a monthly security patch to their devices.