Samsung Electronics North America Executive Vice President David Steel

“Find my phone” apps are becoming more popular and the majority of smartphones are released with these built-in tracking systems. These systems make it easy to remotely lock or wipe your phone if you happen to misplace it or it is stolen.

The problem arises when hackers can exploit these services, like what has happened with Samsung Group’s Find My Mobile system. The National Cyber Security Division, which is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has confirmed that hackers will be able to execute denial-of-service attacks by hacking the service. If the service is turned on, a hacker will be able to remotely lock your phone and change the unlock code. Apart for utter frustration for the user, we are not sure what the hacker will gain.

How the vulnerability in the Samsung can be exploited is shown in a YouTube video uploaded by developer, Mohamed Baset. In the video Baset demonstrates how a phone could be remotely locked, unlocked or made to ring. (Full video below.)

According to the U.S. government’s National Vulnerability Database “The Remote Controls feature on Samsung mobile devices does not validate the source of lock-code data received over a network, which makes it easier for remote attackers to cause a denial of service (screen locking with an arbitrary code) by triggering unexpected Find My Mobile network traffic”.

On the Common Vulnerability Scoring System, they rank the vulnerability on the Find My Mobile System a base score of 7.8, an impact score of 6.9 and an exploitability score of 10.

According to Mashable, a Samsung spokesperson said “Samsung takes the security of our products very seriously and we are currently investigating this matter.”

Good news is that the service is not activated by default; you will actually have to turn the Find My Mobile service on. However, when you register for a Samsung account it will automatically be enabled. Until Samsung provides a response to the vulnerability, which will possibly come in the form of an OTA firmware update, the best solution would be to turn the service off if you have activated it.

photo credit: Stian Eikeland via photopin cc