Samsung’s KNOX security system might be vulnerable to malware attacks
It’s no secret that Android has been a target for attacks from malicious applications and hackers, which is why Samsung endorsed the KNOX security system. This was supposed to be their way of targeting BlackBerry, which is known for its secure service due to encryption.
According to recent studies and the researchers at the Ben-Gurion University of Negev in Israel, the KNOX system possessed a vulnerability that might easily allow malware attacks, which tracks emails or data that was supposed to be kept safe for each user. This study was conducted by using a Galaxy S 4. The researcher from the university’s Cyber Security Lab, Mordechai Guri, said the vulnerability would allow a hacker to “easily intercept” secure data of a user of a Knox-enabled Galaxy smartphone.
He added that in a worst-case scenario, a hacker could modify data and even insert hostile code that could run amok within the secured network. According to the lab’s chief technical officer Dudu Mimran, the new unveiled vulnerability presents a serious threat to all users of phones based on this architecture, such as users of the Samsung Galaxy S4.
Samsung state that they’re well aware of these conclusions, but they’ve mentioned that they don’t hold any weight and that a regular corporate user would have plenty of other apps installed for preventing this from happening. Samsung also insisted that the device used for testing didn’t have the extra pieces of software that would normally be installed by the corporate clients, implying that KNOX isn’t really a complete security solution. A spokesman of Samsung added to be rest assured, that the core Knox architecture cannot be compromised or infiltrated by such malware.
Basically Samsung acknowledge this fault, but they’re practically saying that it’s not as bad as it sounds. Earlier this month, the company said it had released a patch to address a separate vulnerability that affected Knox on Samsung’s Note 3 smartphone.
Source: Wall Street Journal
