Samsung Galaxy S7 smartphones are
prone to hacker attacks. Samsung's Galaxy S7 smartphones include a microchip
security bug that was uncovered earlier this year, endangering millions of
devices for hackers seeking to spy on their users, researchers said. The Galaxy
7 and other smartphones from Samsung Electronics were previously known as a
vulnerability known as meltdown. However, the researchers told Reuters they had
found a way to exploit the meltdown vulnerability to attack Galaxy S7 cell
phones.
Samsung's Galaxy S7 smartphones
include a microchip security bug that was uncovered earlier this year,
endangering millions of devices for hackers seeking to spy on their users,
researchers said. The Galaxy 7 and other smartphones manufactured by Samsung
Electronics were previously considered immune to a security breach known as
meltdown. According to the researchers, most PCs, smartphones and other
computing devices in the world were affected.
Researchers at the Graz University of
Technology told Reuters that they had found a way to exploit the meltdown
vulnerability to attack Galaxy S7 cell phones. The team plans to release their
results on Wednesday at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. They
are investigating the impact of Meltdown on other brands and models of
smartphones and expect to see more vulnerable devices in the near future,
researcher Michael Schwarz told Reuters. "It may affect even more phones
that we do not know about yet," he said. "There are potentially
hundreds of millions of phones that are affected by Meltdown and may not be
patched because the providers themselves do not know it."
Samsung said it had rolled out
patches in January and July to protect the Galaxy S7 phones from Meltdown.
"Samsung takes security very seriously and our products and services are
primarily focused on security," the company said in a statement. A Samsung
spokeswoman did not comment on the number of Galaxy S7 smartphones sold. She
said there were no cases where Meltdown was exploited to attack an S7 handset
and that no other Samsung phones were known to be vulnerable.
Meltdown and a second vulnerability,
known as Specter, can be exploited to expose the contents of the central
processing unit of a computing device - a secure inner sanctum. Hackers can
exploit these vulnerabilities by either bypassing hardware barriers or tricking
applications into revealing secret information such as passwords or bank
details. There are no known cases where hackers exploit one of these
vulnerabilities in a real attack. However, the proliferation of widespread
hardware failures has shaken the computer industry and forced chip makers and
device manufacturers to overcome the fallout. The Galaxy S7 is currently being
used by around 30 million people, according to the research firm Strategy
Analytics. Samsung has released two new versions of its flagship Galaxy since
the premiere of the S7 in 2016.
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