Samsung Galaxy phones are vulnerable to hackers, giving them easy access and full control of your device. They can spy on the entire life of their users. A vulnerability in software on the phones lets hackers look through the phones’ camera, listen to the microphone, read incoming and outgoing texts and install apps, according to reports.
The hack works by exploiting a problem with the Samsung’s re-packaged version of SwiftKey that the company puts in Samsung Galaxy keyboards. That software periodically asks a server whether it needs updating giving hackers easy access by just pretending to be the server and sending malicious codes to your phone. It doesn’t really matter if users actually use the keyboard or not, it is still sends the requests to the server.
It’s confirmed that over 600 million Samsung mobile device users — including those of the recently released Galaxy S6 were affected. Also, phones like the the S6 and Galaxy S4 Mini and some other Samsung Galaxy phones got affected since the keyboard comes pre-installed on these devices.
This problem only seems to be isolated to Samsung’s version of the SwiftKey. Though SwiftKey has confirmed that the problem doesn’t affect any version of SwiftKey’s app that is available for any Android or iOS device from their app stores.
“We supply Samsung with the core technology that powers the word predictions in their keyboard,” a SwiftKey statement said. “It appears that the way this technology was integrated on Samsung devices introduced the security vulnerability. We are doing everything we can to support our long-time partner Samsung in their efforts to resolve this obscure but important security issue.”
Staying away from unsecured wifi networks could reduce the risk of being hit by the problem but that doesn’t mean you’re safe. Hackers could still get in your messages through normal browsing.
Until Samsung fixes the problem, there is little that owners of the phone can do beyond staying off unsecured wifi networks but reports claim that Samsung have provided a patch to mobile network operators to fix this problem. Mobile network operators must push this Android updates out themselves to their various users.
