Samsung Galaxy phones may have a massive security flaw
More than 600 Samsung Galaxy phones could have a major security breach that could make them vulnerable to see hackers take control parts of the phones.
According to the Telegraph, if security is breached, a hacker could be able to access the users camera features and microphone, secretly install apps, access their pictures and listen to the users phone conversations.
The weak spot was discovered to a flaw in the swift keyboard software that comes pre-installed on Samsung phones including its now latest flagship Galaxy S6.
Specifically, it revolves around the updates that were provided to Samsung by Swiftkey, the British Virtual keyboard company, and how Samsung applies them to the pre-installed software.
The swiftkey provides the data on what users are talking about on their phones which are used to improve the typing experience on the Samsung smartphones. However, there is a way in which the Samsung software integrates with the smartphone that could leave the phone open to attacks, according to security firm NowSecure that discovered the bug.
NowSecure had says it had informed the Korean manufacturer about the flaw months ago, and that Samsung has attempted to fix it, but that many phones are still vulnerable to the attacks. NowSecure recently bought popular phones off the shelves and discovered that they could still be hacked into.
This flaw is particularly problematic if the smartphone user is logged into a Wi-Fi network, which are often used by keyboard software to install Swiftkey’s updates.
At this particular point, a potential hacker could exploit the vulnerability to install their code. Since the Swiftkey, updates are given a privileged position on the devices and uses some Swiftkey services.
The flaw is however not related to the SwiftKey keyboard and un-installing it will not fix the defect. The Swift keyboard software at the moment can not be un-installed from the smartphone.
The access is then only possible if the keyboard user’s keyboard is conducting a language update while connected to a compromised network.
Samsung said it was working with Swiftkey to address the issue from moving forward.