Hackers Can Use Emojis To Deliver Exploit To The Target

Cybersecurity researchers believe that hackers could use a random string of emojis soon to take over your computer or smartphone, giving them the advantage over you and your smartphone.

It is common for hackers to craft an exploit when they discover an issue with a target device. There are typically strings of letters and symbols contained in the exploit, just as there are in any other type of code.

Technical Analysis

It has been discovered that there can be an exploit delivered to a target using only a series of emojis with just one click on a button. As a caveat, it should be noted that the emoji exploit only works if a specific set of circumstances occur in order for it to be effective.

It’s a bit of a stretch to imagine such a scenario occurring in the real world. Hackers need emoji-only input to exploit this vulnerability, and emoji-only shellcode is what the hacker needs in order to take advantage of it.

Here below, we have mentioned the shellcodes exploited for emoji-shellcoding:-

• QEMU bare-metal shellcodes
• Espressif ESP32-C3 shellcodes
• HiFive Unleashed Linux shellcodes

Here, the hackers are able to use this prompt to send commands to the compromised device through which they have gained access.

However, how likely is it that a filter that is available exclusively for emojis will be created?

There is actually quite a low probability of that happening. This is a time-consuming process whereby an exploit must be filtered before it can be sent to its target.

This way, in order to be successful, the emoji attack must go through a filter that only accepts emojis, which is not possible at the moment.

It is the research advisor’s objective to provide both attackers and defenders with information regarding the possibility of this attack. In this way, they will be motivated to change their behavior in the future.

The processing of emojis can be difficult for some software programs. This does not imply that emojis can be used to hack the software. The fact that not all computers and programs support emojis indicates that they are sufficiently unexplored to require an adaptation to their use.

You can find the technical details of their research on GitHub.