Linked by David Adams on Wed 30th Mar 2011 16:02 UTC
Hearkening back to the Sony Rootkit brouhaha from a few years ago, a security researcher is claiming in a Network World article that he detected factory-installed keyloggers in two brand new Samsung Laptops. Samsung has made no official response, but a tech support supervisor contacted by the author said that the keystroke logging software was installed by Samsung to "monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used."
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Member since:2006-08-08
Member since:2006-08-08
Member since:2009-09-17
I am agast right now, a goddamn keylogger. I would have thought any company would know better than that. Thought I would have thought the same about rootkits too. Still this is just beyond the pale. All your password, logins, and credit card numbers were just being sent right to Samsung. I don't know what they did with all that data, but I do know what could be done with that data. All it would take is one unscrupulous employee who sees an opertunity to get himself rich.
Never buying Samsung again.
Member since:2008-07-15
Never buying Samsung again.
Yeah. It makes me wonder what their phones and tablets have running in the background. If they're willing to do this on laptops, might they also do it to Android and, since they can, incorporate this into the os at the very lowest levels? It'd be a hell of a lot harder to detect and, without a custom rom to flash these devices with, damn near impossible to get rid of.
I'm glad the only thing I have made by Samsung is my DVD burner. I don't think anyone's figured out how to put key loggers in those... at least not yet.
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 17:26 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
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Linked by David Adams on 05/16/13 4:23 UTC
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/08/13 14:22 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/29/13 21:06 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/24/13 22:24 UTC
They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.More Features »
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Member since:
2006-02-15
This is an ENORMOUSLY stupid move on Samsung's part. It's pretty clear that monitoring people and their private actions without consent and without notifying them of this is illegal, and the risks of the collected data falling to wrong hands are all the more important if the laptop had been bought for business use.
I definitely predict a class-action suit, and if there is any large business using Samsung laptops I can guarantee Samsung will end up paying quite a bit of money in the end.
I am just amazed at the sheer stupidity of it all. I mean, didn't the Sony rootkit fiasco already discourage these things? Sony still can't live that thing down even after all these years, I can't believe Samsung wanting similar reputation! And hell, anyone with half a brain-cell would have known this is illegal, not to mention that they have legal staff there whom they could have asked about it to be certain.
I should buy one of these just for the sake of suing Samsung for spying on me.