Ten-year-old hacker exposes exploitable flaws in Apple and Android games

A 10-year-old Californian hacker has exposed a new type of security vulnerability in many mobile games at a hacker conference in Las Vegas.

Known only as CyFi, the young hacker told attendees of the Defcon event how she found that advancing the clock on a mobile device can open a loophole in many games that can be exploited.

CyFi discovered the loophole while trying to speed up farm-based games that force players to wait hours before they can harvest a crop, according to the BBC.

Many games are designed to block time manipulation, but CyFi found ways around these security measures, forcing the games into a state not tested by their makers.

CyFi did not reveal details of how this state may be exploited, but security experts say such flaws often allow attackers to run their own code or access saleable data on mobile devices.

The exploit has been found to work in games for devices running both the Apple iOS and Google Android mobile operating systems.

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