Samsung has made some changes to Android’s core kernel on the Galaxy A50, and Google is not happy. Google says that these changes were “unnecessary”, and that they threaten, rather than strengthen the phone’s security.
Google’s Project Zero Team’s researcher, Jann Honn, outlined the issue with this change Samsung made to Android’s core kernel.
Samsung’s changes included a new security feature. This new feature is supposed to restrict an attacker, it’s supposed to prevent it from “reading or modifying user data”.
Samsung’s changes to Android’s core kernel weakened security, says Google
That sounds good, right? Well, it’s not, in practice, it seems. Mr. Honn says that the move is “futile”, and that it introduces vulnerabilities that weaken the phone’s security.
He says that Samsung’s protection mechanisms “won’t provide meaningful protection”, while he also added that they “only block straightforward rooting tools that haven’t been customized for Samsung phones”.
Mr. Honn also added that he found a bug. This bug affects Samsung’s Process Authenticator (PROCA) security subsystem.
That bug has been patched, though it seems. The bug was first spotted way back in November last year, and according to Samsung’s website, it has been patched.
Messing around with Android kernel is not a good idea, warns Google
Mr. Honn warned Samsung, and everyone else, that messing around with Android’s kernel is not a good idea. OEMs usually mean well, but they tend to do more harm than good. Mr. Honn actually shared a lot more information via the Google Project Zero website, so click here if you’d like to know all the details.
Samsung will hopefully stay away from Android’s core kernel from this point on. It seems like Google is really not impressed with what the Korean tech giant did here.
The Galaxy A50, for those of you who do not know, is Samsung’s mid-range handset. This device was announced a year ago, in fact.
The Galaxy A50 has managed to become quite popular across Europe, and in a number of other markets. This device brings a rather large display, a solid SoC, a large battery, and various other features to the table.
The phone also has an in-display fingerprint scanner, fast charging, three rear cameras, and it actually looks quite nice in terms of design. The phone does include a plastic frame, and backplate, though. Samsung did that to keep its price tag down, which makes sense.