Samsung Decides Not To Patch Kernel Vulnerabilities In Some S4 Smartphones

An anonymous reader writes: QuarksLAB, a security research company, has stumbled upon two kernel vulnerabilities for Samsung Galaxy S4 devices, which Samsung has decided to patch only for recent devices running Android Lollipop, but not Jelly Bean or KitKat. The two vulnerabilities (kernel memory disclosure and kernel memory corruption) were discovered in February 2014 and reported to Samsung in August 2014, affecting the samsung_extdisp driver of Samsung S4 (GT-I9500) devices. Bugs break ASLR and lead to denial of service (DoS) state or even elevating attacker privileges.

Comments

Re:What kind of dumbass company...

[TheRaven64]

Mobile phone vendors make their money selling new phones. You want a new Android, get a new phone.

Sure, but the new phone I get will be from a vendor that I can trust to support it for its lifetime. I may upgrade my phone after 2-3 years, but I'll probably hand the old one off to someone else or use it as a spare. If the phone becomes useless after 1 year, then I'll factor that in when I calculate the value of the phone - if I can amortise the cost over 4 years rather than 2, then the cost of the phone is not as good.

Your contract will be up in 2 years

What kind of idiot signs a 2-year phone contract in 2015?