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from the don't-bother-calling-me-I-can-already-hear-you dept.
As many as 600 million Samsung phones may be vulnerable to attacks that allow hackers to surreptitiously monitor the camera and microphone, read incoming and outgoing text messages, and install malicious apps, a security researcher said.
The vulnerability is in the update mechanism for a Samsung-customized version of SwiftKey, available on the Samsung Galaxy S6, S5, and several other Galaxy models. When downloading updates, the Samsung devices don't encrypt the executable file, making it possible for attackers in a position to modify upstream traffic—such as those on the same Wi-Fi network—to replace the legitimate file with a malicious payload. The exploit was demonstrated Tuesday at the Blackhat security conference in London by Ryan Welton, a researcher with security firm NowSecure. A video of his exploit is here.
Thus will hackers be treated to front row seats to 600 million pockets full of lint.
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Informative) by kaszz on Friday June 19 2015, @11:19PM
Seems only nowsecure.com claims this 600 million number. Neither Ars technica or CERT mentions it.
According to Wikipedia:
S4: 40 million sold in the first 6 months
S4 Mini: no data
S5: 12 million in its first 3 months
S6: 10 million in its first 1 months
However this article [androidauthority.com] says counterpoint [counterpointresearch.com] say Samsung sold 5 million units upto August 2013. Some daring calculations doing an guesstimate put it the number of exploitable phones at 45 million units.
It should however mean that at least 62 million units Samsung Galaxy S4-S6 is out there. Enough to have serious impact. Especially if one could turn those phones into access points for WiFi. But I think we need a source for that 600 million unit figure.