Friday 26 June 2015

Samsung Galaxy: What You Need to Know About Reported Security Risk


Samsung
Reports suggest that millions of owners of Samsung Galaxy Smartphone might be at risk dealing with calls eavesdropping, data theft and malware installation. Downside to this problem is the fact that no action can be taken by the owners to avoid this situation. The security flaw has been found in the Swiftkey keyboard software that has been preinstalled on nearly 600 million smartphones made by the South Korean electronics giant.

This security flaw was reported by Nowsecure, mobile security company. Since the users have no option to uninstall this software they are basically powerless and more prone to this vulnerability. According to the reports some of the devices which have been disclosed to have been affected include Galaxy S6, S5, S4 as well as S4 mini. Statement released by Samsung has suggested that they are working on releasing out a solution to this problem in the coming few day. This fix will be accessible to the uses through their Samsung Knox service. This fix will be like a security policy updated which can be downloaded and installed on the phones.

The statement of the company also indicated that they are taking any emerging security threats seriously. They are not only working on the security policy update but they are working on the Swiftkey to avoid any potential threats in the near future.

Customers are already getting upset with the increasing instances of security flaw and security breaches in terms of their data getting compromised as well as getting held by banks and retailers. Now if the same happens on the mobile device, we can understand their fury? According to the reports released by Target, nearly 40 million people has reported their credit cards to be stolen at the sale terminals and this was followed by increasing hacks on email addresses, names as well as phone numbers that affected 70 million customers. According to Nowsecure, Samsung was already informed about this problem in December 2014.

Even though Samsung has already started giving patch to their mobile network operators but they cannot confirm if the carriers are providing the same on the devices as well. According to the devices lists which have got affected, all these phones have unknown patch condition or they do not have the patch available. The phones are becoming highly vulnerable to flaws and attacks from various fronts.

For instance a small time hacker might be able to gain access to the phone by using unsecured Wi-Fi connections on the other hand and sophisticated hacker will take a professional approach to gain access through proper sources. Some of the security experts have stated that this latest attack might fetch many returns for the hackers.

They stated that users should avoid using insecure Wi-Fi networks to avoid risks, try using different types of mobile devices as well as keep updated about the patch update and timing. They stated that lots of things were not in place which can make it difficult for the hackers to extract any benefits. It looks to be very unusual path taken by people to hack into computers and devices.

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