Security Glitch in Samsung Galaxy S4 Discovered
Security Glitch in Samsung Galaxy S4 Discovered
December 23, 2013
The Wall Street Journal — The security platform for Samsung’s best-selling Galaxy S4 smartphone suffers from a security vulnerability that could allow malicious software to track e-mails and record data communications, according to cybersecurity researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
The alleged security gap, which the BGU researchers say they discovered earlier this month, comes as Samsung pitches the new security platform called Knox to potential clients at the U.S. Department of Defense and other government and corporate entities in a bid to compete with BlackBerry, whose devices have been considered the gold standard among security-conscious clients for years.
Mordechai Guri, the researcher who discovered the alleged problem at Ben-Gurion University’s Cyber Security Lab, said that the vulnerability would allow a hacker to “easily intercept” secure data of a user of a Knox-enabled Galaxy smartphone.
In a worst-case scenario, he added, a hacker could modify data and even insert hostile code that could run amok within the secured network.
“The new unveiled vulnerability presents a serious threat to all users of phones based on this architecture, such as users of the Samsung Galaxy S4,” said Dudu Mimran, the chief technical officer of BGU’s Cyber Security Lab in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.
Guri said that he stumbled upon the security hole while working on an unrelated project having to do with mobile security. He said that he tested out his results on multiple Galaxy S4 devices that had been purchased through retail stores.
Guri’s doctoral adviser, Prof. Yuval Elovici who runs the University’s Cyber Security Lab, said in a phone interview that his student’s discovery was “very, very alarming.”
A spokesman for Samsung said that the company “takes all security vulnerability claims very seriously” and promised to further investigate the lab’s claims.
Read more on The Wall Street Journal website >>
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