The Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge has been out for a while, and it’s a relatively popular device, one that Samsung were hoping would bring a lot of focus to the company and would improve their position on the market. And while it did seem to succeed in scoring some better recognition for Samsung, lately the device has been the subject of some criticism as there have been reports of major issues with it related to its security, and users have been advised to be very careful with how they are using their phones.
Google themselves have released an official report outlining the situation with the security of the Galaxy S6 Edge, and the company has been very critical of the current state of the device, claiming that it’s a serious security risk and pointing out 11 particular flaws in its security model. Users have been growing increasingly worried over those reports, and it’s not very clear how the situation is going to unfold in the future.
Because, according to some experts, those flaws are simply too many and too serious to go by unnoticed, and many people are expecting that they would have a serious impact on the company’s popularity and performance on the market. However, to Samsung’s credit, they have been doing a good job fixing the operating system and addressing the issues as they have been coming up.
Still, we wouldn’t be surprised if this also affects people’s trust in Samsung in the future, and it would be sad to see the company getting swept under the rug due to issues like these, but at the same time, they only have themselves to blame if that ends up happening.
Among the issues is a security flaw that apparently gives hackers access to the e-mails of a user, and the report indicates that the flaw isn’t even that difficult to exploit, and it’s actually quite open to attackers. Because of this, users should avoid storing any confidential or private e-mails on their devices, and should contact support specialists if they believe their data has been compromised.
There are also more interesting – and more serious – flaws mentioned in the report, including one that apparently allows a hacker to change the way the device’s camera is configured by simply sending a maliciously modified image to the device. This particular bug has been enjoying a lot of attention by the security community, as it’s shown a peculiar flaw in the way the device works and it’s been analyzed thoroughly by various security experts.
As we said above, Samsung have been responsible in addressing those issues, and according to Google’s report, the company has always been careful to release updates within an appropriate timeframe, preventing hackers from exploiting the situation too much. Still, in some cases it apparently took a while for the updates to arrive, and some security experts have described this as a slightly worrying trend. It’s probably not very realistic to expect Samsung to fix everything as soon as it shows up though.
The company’s only flaw could possibly be pointed out in the way they communicate with their fans, as they have been relatively quiet on those issues and haven’t been too eager to talk about them. According to some, this is not a very appropriate approach for a company of this class, as Samsung are supposed to always discuss important security flaws in their operating system with their users, preventing people from getting affected too seriously by those bugs.