Beware! A simple wallpaper image can brick your Android device
In the past, we have often heard of some strings or files that you can send to other users to cause their iPhone/iPad to reboot.
Now there’s a similar issue affecting some Android devices: a simple picture can soft-brick some Android phones if it’s set as the wallpaper.
Twitter user Ice Universe, a leaker focused primarily on Samsung products, tweeted about an image file that was causing some smartphones to crash and soft-brick:
The image couse some Android phone to crash, if used as wallpaper: the device enter a state of being soft-bricked when the image is set as a wallpaper. Upon wallpaper being set, the device crashes and continually turns the screen on and off on the lockscreen.
There’s no way to leave this loop as even a reboot causes the phone to keep doing this after turning back on: the only solution appears to be a hard-reset.
What is the reason of the crash?
According to a analysis by Dylan Roussel published on Twitter, the issue in related to a lack of controls during the parsing of Color Profile, primarly on the Android 10 builds used on Samsung devices:
Is there a patch?
Not yet, but the issue has been notified to Google by researcher.
So, waiting for a patch, not to accept wallpapers from strangers!