The in-built keyboard that has been developed by Swiftkey affects over 600 million Samsung devices, says NowSecure and the flaw was mobile security researcher Ryan Welton who works for the company.
NowSecure said that Samsung was notified in December 2014 of the flaw and that they also informed CERT (Computer Emergency Response Teams) who assigned CVE-2015-2865, and also informed the Google Android security team.
According to NowSecure’s blogspot, the flaw allows an attack to remotely access:
1) Access sensors and resources like GPS, camera and microphone
2) Secretly install malicious app(s) without the user knowing
3) Tamper with how other apps work or how the phone works
4) Eavesdrop on incoming/outgoing messages or voice calls
5) Attempt to access sensitive personal data like pictures and text messages
According to technical details of this vulnerability, “the attack vector for this requires an attacker capable of modifying upstream traffic. The vulnerability is triggered automatically (no human interaction) on reboot as well as randomly when the application decides to update.”
It should be noted that Samsung had been providing mobile operators with a patch for this fix in early 2015 although whether carriers have provided the patch to the devices is not yet clear.
http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/mobile-tabs/samsung-devices-have-keyboard-security-risk-over-600-mn-devices-affected-report/
NowSecure said that Samsung was notified in December 2014 of the flaw and that they also informed CERT (Computer Emergency Response Teams) who assigned CVE-2015-2865, and also informed the Google Android security team.
According to NowSecure’s blogspot, the flaw allows an attack to remotely access:
1) Access sensors and resources like GPS, camera and microphone
2) Secretly install malicious app(s) without the user knowing
3) Tamper with how other apps work or how the phone works
4) Eavesdrop on incoming/outgoing messages or voice calls
5) Attempt to access sensitive personal data like pictures and text messages
According to technical details of this vulnerability, “the attack vector for this requires an attacker capable of modifying upstream traffic. The vulnerability is triggered automatically (no human interaction) on reboot as well as randomly when the application decides to update.”
It should be noted that Samsung had been providing mobile operators with a patch for this fix in early 2015 although whether carriers have provided the patch to the devices is not yet clear.
http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/mobile-tabs/samsung-devices-have-keyboard-security-risk-over-600-mn-devices-affected-report/
