Pre-installed keyboards on the Samsung Galaxy phones are said to make them vulnerable to hackers, as per a NowSecure, a mobile security company.
Samsung’s built-in keyboard uses the SwiftKey software development kit for prediction and language packs and they are said to be prone to hacks. The keyboard’s searches for language pack updates are not sent over encrypted lines but in plain text. The vulnerability was discovered by Ryan Welton from mobile security specialists NowSecure. Welton found that a hacker could create a spoof proxy server and send a fake update to the device with malicious code. He could even access the incoming and outgoing messages or voice calls, access personal data such as pictures or text messages, tamper with apps, and even install other malicious apps, access sensors and resources like GPS, camera and microphone
“The vulnerability in question poses a low risk: a user must be connected to a compromised network (such as a spoofed public Wi-Fi network), where a hacker with the right tools has specifically intended to gain access to their device. This access is then only possible if the user’s keyboard is conducting a language update at that specific time, while connected to the compromised network.”
Swiftkey said in the response.
Swiftkey has responded to this by saying that this vulnerability is unrelated to and does not affect our SwiftKey consumer apps on Google Play and the Apple App Store.