Samsung Galaxy | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A group of academics from Tel Aviv University have disclosed details of now-patched "severe" design flaws affecting about 100 million Android-based Samsung smartphones that could have resulted in the extraction of secret cryptographic keys. The shortcomings are the result of an analysis of the cryptographic design and implementation of Android's hardware-backed Keystore in Samsung's Galaxy S8, S9, S10, S20, and S21 flagship devices, researchers Alon Shakevsky, Eyal Ronen, and Avishai Wool  said . Trusted Execution Environments ( TEEs ) are a secure zone that provide an isolated environment for the execution of Trusted Applications (TAs) to carry out security critical tasks to ensure confidentiality and integrity. On Android, the hardware-backed  Keystore  is a system that facilitates the creation and storage of cryptographic keys within the TEE, making them more difficult to be extracted from the device in a manner that prevents the underlying operating system fr...

With the growing number of cyber attacks and data breaches, a number of tech companies and organisations have started Bug Bounty programs for encouraging hackers, bug hunters and researchers to find and responsibly report bugs in their services and get rewarded. Samsung is the latest in the list of tech companies to launch a bug bounty program, announcing that the South Korean electronics giant will offer rewards of up to $200,000 to anyone who discovers vulnerabilities in its mobile devices and associated software. Dubbed Mobile Security Rewards Program , the newly-launched bug bounty program will cover 38 Samsung mobile devices released from 2016 onwards which currently receive monthly or quarterly security updates from the company. So, if you want to take part in the Samsung Mobile Security Rewards Program, you have these devices as your target—the Galaxy S, Galaxy Note, Galaxy A, Galaxy J, and the Galaxy Tab series, as well as Samsung's flagship devices, the S8, S8+, a...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

One of the world's largest smartphone makers is being sued by the Dutch Consumers' Association (DCA) for its lack in providing timely software updates to its Android smartphones. This doesn't surprise me, though. The majority of manufacturers fail to deliver software updates for old devices for years. However, the consumer protection watchdog in The Netherlands, The Dutch Consumentenbond, filed a lawsuit against Samsung, due to the manufacturer's grip over the local market compared to other manufacturers. Last year, the discovery of the scary Stagefright Security Bug , which affected over 1 Billion Android devices worldwide, forced Samsung to implement a security update process that " fast tracks the security patches over the air when security vulnerabilities are uncovered a security update process that " fast tracks the security patches over the air when security vulnerabilities are uncovered, " and that the security updates will...

If you own a Samsung Galaxy Phone – S6, S6 Edge or Note 4 , in particular – there are chances that a skilled hacker could remotely intercept your voice calls to listen in and even record all your voice conversations. Two security researchers, Daniel Komaromy of San Francisco and Nico Golde of Berlin, have demonstrated exactly the same during a security conference in Tokyo. The duo demonstrated a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack on an out-of-the-box and most updated Samsung handset that allowed them to intercept voice calls by connecting the device to fake cellular base stations. The issue actually resides in the Samsung's baseband chip , which comes in Samsung handsets, that handles voice calls but is not directly accessible to the end user. How to Intercept Voice Calls? The researchers set up a bogus OpenBTS base station that nearby Samsung devices, including the latest Samsung S6 and S6 Edge , think is a legitimate cellular tower. Once connected to ...

More than 600 Million users of Samsung Galaxy smartphones, including the newly released Galaxy S6, are potentially vulnerable to a software bug that allows hackers to secretly monitor the phone's camera and microphone, read text messages and install malicious apps. The vulnerability is due to a problem with the Samsung built-in keyboard app that enables easier predictive text. One of the keyboard app version, SwiftKey IME , that comes prepackaged with Samsung's latest Galaxy smartphones could allow a malicious hacker to remotely execute code on user's phone even when if they are not using the keyboard app. Users cannot get rid of this Flaw The app cannot be uninstalled or disabled by the users of the Samsung smartphone devices, so it is up to Samsung to fix the critical bug. The vulnerability was discovered by NowSecure mobile security researcher Ryan Welton, who notified Samsung about the bug in December last year. The keyboard app periodic...

After introducing the Fingerprint scanner to its new release, Samsung next plans to add IRIS scanning technology to its future smartphones to better improve the security of smartphones and for being more innovative too. According to a report released by The Wall Street Journal, Samsung senior Vice President Rhee In-jong told analysts and investors at a forum in Hong Kong that the company is planning to incorporate biometric sensors such as eye scanners into more of its products as a part of its enterprise security software. " We're looking at various types of biometric mechanisms and one of things that everybody is looking at is iris detection, " Rhee said. The move is no doubt in order to bring an added layer of security to its devices. A Smartphone with an eye-scanning feature would most likely to be used in the front-facing camera to scan the unique patterns of the user's iris and once the pattern get matched with the already stored user's iris image in the phon...

Google's Android operating system may be open source, but the version of Android that runs on most phones, tablets, and other devices includes proprietary, closed-source components. Phone makers, including Samsung ships its Smartphones with a modified version of Android, with some pre-installed proprietary software and because of lack in independent code review of those closed-source apps, it is complex to authenticate its integrity and to identify the existence of backdoors . Paul Kocialkowski , the developers of the  Replicant OS  has uncovered a backdoor pre-installed on Samsung Galaxy devices and the Nexus S, that provides remote access to all the data in the device. Replicant OS is an open source operating system based on the Android mobile platform, which aims to replace all proprietary Android components with their free software counterparts. In a blog post , He explained that Samrtphones come with two separate processors, one for gen...

The US Department of Defense has cleared Apple's iPhone and iPad for use on its military networks, along with the Samsung Galaxy S4 and BlackBerry 10 devices, the agency said in a statement Friday. The entire DOD is much, much larger, of course, and mobile devices are increasing in importance for the military just as much as they are for we civilians. The report notes that out of more than 600,000 mobile devices used by the Defense Department, only about 41,000 of those are Apple products, with most of those not connected directly to the military's networks. But because these platforms have previously not been certified or cleared for use, such devices had not been connected to secure military networks, except for testing. The move was hardly shocking, but Samsung devices running the Knox security suite and BlackBerry 10 already trickling into the hands of Pentagon employees, the decision sets the stage for a three-way bout for military market supremacy. Offic...

Android devices having more than 1.3 million daily activation and that there are now more than 500 million Android devices active worldwide. Where Android is growing at a rapid pace, there is equal growth in users from various countries like Kurdistan. Kurdistan refers to parts of eastern Turkey (Turkish Kurdistan), northern Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan), northwestern Iran (Iranian Kurdistan) and northern Syria (Western Kurdistan). Rawand Haider ,  Petroleum Engineer by profession and  Android Rom Developer releases first Android  Kurdish version Rom. Officially there is no Kurdish language in Android devices yet available. Kurdish people begun to realize that the future is for Android OS, as a result, they're buying android phones more than ever. More than 60 million people speaking Kurdish language and  Rawand's project becomes  quite useful and handy project  for them now. The Rom is based on Jelly bean 4.1.1 an...

A user over at the XDA Developers Forum has gone searching through Samsung Exynos kernels and has found one whopper of an exploit. There's both good and bad news with this exploit so head down below for more details on this new found glory. This exploits affects a number of Samsung-made devices, along with potentially any device using an Exynos 4412 or 4210 processor and Samsung kernels. The vulnerability was described on Saturday by the user " alephzain " on XDA Developers, a forum for mobile developers. This Vulnerability could give remotely downloaded apps the ability to read user data, brick phones, or perform other malicious activities. This functionality can be exploited by some malicious apps to gain root access to the device, wipe/steal sensitive data, install malicious codes, and could also be used to potentially brick the phone. According to xda-developers user supercurio, Samsung has been made aware of the security hole, but the company has not p...