<story><title>Samsung Galaxy Back-door</title><url>http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/SamsungGalaxyBackdoor</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>flyinglizard</author><text>My understanding is that there&amp;#x27;s simply filesystem access for the modem, through some Samsung supplied kernel driver. Replicant implies Samsung may have &lt;i&gt;another&lt;/i&gt; backdoor in the modem itself, allowing to remotely issue commands accessing the phone&amp;#x27;s filesystem. That is pure speculation and FUD.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Samsung Galaxy devices running proprietary Android versions come with a back-door that provides remote access to the data stored on the device.
In particular, the proprietary software that is in charge of handling the communications with the modem, using the Samsung IPC protocol, implements a class of requests known as RFS commands, that allows the modem to perform remote I&amp;#x2F;O operations on the phone&amp;#x27;s storage. As the modem is running proprietary software, &lt;i&gt;it is likely that it offers over-the-air remote control&lt;/i&gt;, that could then be used to issue the incriminated RFS messages and access the phone&amp;#x27;s file system.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Nothing substantiated there, just speculation.&lt;p&gt;Edit: This is not even interesting, and I&amp;#x27;ll explain why: normally, any component that has a kernel driver can already access all your data. The network interface in your PC can already do just the same - it has some proprietary firmware running on it, as well as a privileged OS driver that can see anything the system does; and it&amp;#x27;s connected to the internet.&lt;p&gt;Most likely, Samsung placed the driver there for providing a convenient storage area for the modem&amp;#x27;s firmware, in case it requires one (for logging, updating or whatever).</text></comment>
<story><title>Samsung Galaxy Back-door</title><url>http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/SamsungGalaxyBackdoor</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jmomo</author><text>This reads mostly like an advert for Replicant.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;However, when Replicant is installed on the device, this back-door is not effective: Replicant does not cooperate with back-doors.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I am sure that people who run alternative ROMs&amp;#x2F;OSes would like to know if they are affected or not, but there doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to be much mention of that... except this line, which seems to indicate that at least Cyanogen IS affected:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Alternatively, the kernel could block the incriminated RFS requests and keep a trace of them in the logs for the record. That option would work for CyanogenMod, where the incriminated proprietary blob is still used.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve heard about Replicant before and am interested in it, but something about a self-serving warning like that turns me off.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Okay, my bad. I thought this was like a public announcement, not just a wiki page. That makes the context different, so my comments about reading like an advert are not nearly as applicable.</text></comment>