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Samsung Left Millions Vulnerable To Hackers Because It Forgot To Renew a Domain (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on from the security-woes dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Samsung cellphones used to have a stock app called S Suggest. The company apparently discontinued the app recently, and then forgot to renew a domain that was used to control it. This snafu left millions of smartphone users vulnerable to hackers who could've registered the domain and installed malicious apps on the phones.

1 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Why did they even need a separate domain for this? by ZorinLynx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You'd think they could have instead used "ssuggest.samsung.com" or similar, rather than registering an entirely separate domain for what is essentially a minor feature on a phone.

    The nice thing about DNS is that it was designed PRECISELY TO BE USED THIS WAY, being able to establish a hierarchy so that an entity can organize all their hostnames/services in one hierarchy.