DailyTech - Developer Finds Security Hole in Galaxy Note II, S2

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Gadgets Developer Finds Security Hole in Galaxy Note II, S2
Jason Mick (Blog) - December 17, 2012 8:31 PM

9 comment(s) - last by Trisped.. on Dec 20 at 2:46 AM

Memory permissions raise danger of local attacks

Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KSC:005930) the top maker of Android smartphones in the world (or any kind of phones, for that matter), received some unwelcome news on Monday, when a developer going by the handle "alephzain" posted details on Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) XNA developers forum regarding memory permissions security holes in some of Samsung's top devices.

In order to give their proprietary Exynos 4 system-on-a-chip a dedicated line from the camera to the memory, Samsung opened up permissions to the on-chip DRAM. The only issue is that it appears to have opened its memory for writing to all users.

That's good news for modders who could use it to obtain root for the purpose of installing custom builds of Android like Cyanogen. Bu at it's bad news from a security perspective.

_{The Galaxy Note II}

The flaw appears to affect a number of top Samsung devices, including the Galaxy Note II, the Galaxy S2, and the Meizu MX. Comments the developer who found the flaw, "The good news is we can easily obtain root on these devices and the bad is there is no control over it."

Generally to do something truly malicious with the flaw, you would have to use a trojan app equipped with memory dumping or memory injection functionality. But given the success of past trojans against Android-rival Apple, Inc. (AAPL) the possibility of this flaw being exploited in the wild should not be ruled out.

Sources: XDA, CNET

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RE: Galaxy S3 Affected

By Trisped on 12/20/2012 2:46:35 AM , Rating: 2

The article is not reporting on malware, it is reporting on a vulnerability in a popular handset. Since it should be exploitable for root access, it is on the order of the iOS jailbreak hacks which were so widely reported.

Personally I think Windows vulnerabilities are a different league. While they often do achieve root level (admin privileges), they do so with the user's consent. This is in stark contrast to the attempts of Apple and now Samsung to keep root access for themselves.

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