Chris Vaughan, Area Vice President of Technical Account Management, EMEA at Tanium comments on Samsung attack
The attackers have teased stolen source code taken from various parts of the Samsung network, I believe that this breach is genuine and it could cause significant damage to the company.
Some specific parts of the code that have been leaked are key security components for Samsung devices, this could make cracking and breaking into phones easier. I expect attackers to test if biometric security controls such as fingerprint and face ID can be bypassed. This could even be leveraged by law enforcement and could be a privacy concern for Samsung users. We have seen several issues in the past with breaking into phones being challenged, most notably the FBI Apple Encryption Dispute.
In theory, this breach could make it easier for malware to be written to exploit phones remotely, and since Samsung is widely used the attack surface could be large and lucrative for cybercriminals.
The potential consequences of this breach again highlights the importance of cybersecurity for all organisations. Protecting any organisation from the impact of a cyber- attack comes down to ensuring that there is visibility across the IT estate to identify any problems and to have the control in place so that any issues can be fixed at speed. In the aftermath of an attack, it is important to immediately start the process of damage control, to mitigate the impact as much as possible – and having appropriate back-up and disaster recovery solutions in place is crucial to doing so.
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