As giant and dominant as Samsung has become in the global mobile industry, the company still hasn’t quite cracked the enterprise market to the extent that it hoped to in 2013. Samsung made enterprise a key focus over this past year and launched the Knox security platform intended to add a new layer of secure services for businesses on top of Android, but it’s unclear how much traction the company has had. Now, a new hurdle has seemingly emerged as cybersecurity researchers at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev claim to have uncovered a huge security vulnerability in the Galaxy S4 and other devices that run Samsung’s Knox security software.
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the vulnerability could allow malicious hackers to “easily intercept” secure data on Knox-enabled Samsung smartphones. “The new unveiled vulnerability presents a serious threat to all users of phones based on [Knox] architecture,” Ben-Gurion University security researcher Dudu Mimran said. The security hole can apparently be used to monitor and steal data communications and also to track emails sent to and from handsets like the Galaxy S4.
Samsung responded to the report, stating that it is looking into the researchers’ claims but an initial investigation suggests that the security hole isn’t as severe as Mimran and his team have stated.
