Android 12 brings the end of 2G networks and it is for our security

With the arrival of 5G, 2G and 3G networks are far away, but there are still those who use them, which is why our phones have a dedicated modem for these communication technologies. The problem is that some are not safe at all.

There is a news about Android 12 that could go unnoticed, since from the outside it seems that it does not affect anyone. But that actually has much more meaning than we might suppose at first.

This is that Android 12 has discreetly added an option to disable 2G at the modem level.. To which you will ask, and what does that affect me? In much more than it seems.

As the original report points out, 2G is the second generation of mobile communications, created in 1991, and its age is evident in the numerous vulnerabilities that have been found since then.

2G uses weak encryption between the tower and the device that can be cracked in real time by an attacker to intercept calls and text messages.

There is also no tower authentication with the phone, allowing you to impersonate a real 2G tower. Cell site simulators, also known as stingrays, exploit these methods to intercept communications.


This is Samsung’s flagship today, for power, connectivity and battery charge, a smartphone that will give you good service for many years.

So that they can downgrade your connection from 4G to 2G, and then apply the above attacks. So if you value your privacy and other rights, it’s important to stay away from 2G if you can.

For this reason at Google they have decided that devices that come out with Android 12 will have the option to disable 2G networks from the modem itself, thus preventing our phone from being hacked.

As EFF points out, on newer Pixel and Samsung devices you can disable 2G by turning on the option in Settings > Network & Internet > SIMs > Allow 2G. But as far as we know, doing so will bring up a rather annoying and persistent notification on Samsung devices.

Yes indeed, in the event of an emergency call, the operating system itself reactivates 2G to have any nearby network or line available, but as we have said that will only happen in emergency calls.

Reference-computerhoy.com

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