Poking Holes In Samsung's Android Security 107
Orome1 writes "Tired of waiting for Samsung to fix a string of critical flaws in their smartphones running Android, Italian security researcher Roberto Paleari has decided to inform the public about the seriousness of the matter and maybe make the company pick up the pace. Mindful of the danger that the vulnerabilities present to the users if they are exploited by malicious individuals, he decided not to share any technical details, but to just give a broad overview of what their misuse would allow. This includes a silent installation of highly-privileged applications with no user interaction and an app performing almost any action on the victim's phone."
Samsung image tarnished with Android (Score:4, Interesting)
Say what you will about Apple & the iPhone, but I appreciate the tight integration of OS & hardware and their desire to provide a consistent & reliable user experience. I own and use a (Sprint) Samsung Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch, and it was a series of broken promises on ever getting ICS. When finally rolled out, it wasn't the true android experience, but some half-baked Samsung-proprietary interface aka "Touchwiz." Great, that wasn't what I was sold when I purchased the device. I want android, not Samsung's half-baked, bug-filled, garbage-software-filled version of it.
Eventually, I rooted and installed JB, because Samsung sure as heck wasn't going to do that. And then, as you venture deeper into the rooting environment, you find out a bunch of hardware/software issues directly caused by Samsung, including but not limited the EMMC super-brick bug. These security issues in TFA are just more of the same. For me, their handling of their android phones and my experience with them has tarnished their image across their entire product fleet. Will I buy a Samsung brand washer/dryer? There's a lot of digital tech in even washing/drying machines nowadays. Before this, their name wasn't an issue. Now, maybe I consider some other brand.
Re:Already tarnished for me (Score:5, Interesting)
are you one of these crazy old people who still repairs stuff?
I am. I have a ~7 year old Samsung 1600x1200 monitor that still looks nice. I like this form factor, and it's hard to get in these days of HDTV LCDs. Unfortunately, Samsung was known for using shoddy capacitors in that time period, and a few years ago my monitor started blacking out shortly after power up.
I found a video on YouTube where they showed how to fix my exact model, and I fixed mine with $5 of new caps. Now it's still going strong.