There’s been constant paranoia about the cameras in smartphones for as long as smartphones have had cameras. Can somebody hack into your phone, turn on your camera and watch? Or record? Well, it turns out that yes, they can. At least, they can if you’re one of the potentially “hundreds of millions” of Android users on a Google or Samsung smartphone.

The issue was first discovered (at least, publicly) by the security research team at Checkmarx. They say that after a detailed analysis of the Google Camera app in the Pixel 3, they found a way to manipulate certain code to take control of the camera to shoot photos or record videos, even when the phone was locked with the screen off, and without the user knowing.

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