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Serious flaws in the way Samsung phones encrypt key material in TrustZone
- jsmith99 5y agoThis was patched a few months ago https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/23/samsung_encryption_phones/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/23/samsung_encryption_ph... (right at bottom of article)
- 4pkjai 5y agoI used a Samsung phone for a few months, it gave me the strong impression that they really don't know how to develop software properly.
- scim-knox-twox 5y agoI liked old Samsung phones, e.g., phones with bada OS.
- Razengan 5y agoTheir entire value proposition (as marketed by themselves) is as an alternative to Apple. For some people that is enough.
- theWreckluse 5y agoTrue, Samsung makes a big deal of it. But they don’t actually deserve that title imo. They’re hardly a worthy contender. I am not an apple fan boy, but Samsung is just nowhere close to the apple experience.
- chrisjc 5y ago> but Samsung is just nowhere close to the apple experience. True... they're only the next closest. After fleeing the Google ecosystem, my only seriously choices were Samsung or Apple. I do miss the Android OS, but not going back to the bloat and data-vacuums that are intertwined with it.
- pmontra 5y agoWell, I own a few Samsung devices. There is no Samsung experience. I don't bother signing in into a Samsung account or using their store. What for? I already have to be signed in into Google's store to get updates for the apps I must use. Samsung's one is useless and it's not the reason I bought from them. I bought an A40 because it was the smallest Android phone on the market (and yet almost one inch too tall) and a tablet (S5e?) because it had Linux in DeX. By the way, I keep Google usage minimal. I don't need most of their services. Even YouTube works without an account and I'm using NewPipe most of the time. What I really need is Play, only to update maps, Maps mostly because of satellite images (I use OSMAnd) and Translate as a dictionary. Syncthing and KDE connect deal with backup and file transfer.
- rjzzleep 5y agoUntil recent Samsung smart devices, you HAD to use their store and the experience was horrendous. Full of nonworking paid apps, no working review system that I could see, it was an absolute nightmare to use. It's actually quite sad cause the hardware itself wasn't bad and the battery life of Tizen was fantastic.
- asddubs 5y agoI really do hate how big phones have gotten now. If it wasn't for f-droid I would just get an iphone, at least they make phones in sane sizes
- pmontra 5y agoThe old SE was nice. The new SE is big. The 12 mini is a little smaller.
- vladvasiliu 5y ago> and a tablet (S5e?) because it had Linux in DeX. Is that still a thing? A few years ago I was interested in that, as an alternative to a laptop, but I seem to remember that it was on the way out.
- pmontra 5y ago
- rapnie 5y agoIt gives me the impression that, even though I paid good money on it, Samsung doesn't see me as owner and will leech as much private data off me as they possibly can.
- account-5 5y agoThis is my impression as an unhappy Samsung smart TV owner, despite being a happy owner of an older Samsung "dumb" TV; the reason I bought their crappy smart TV.
- scim-knox-twox 5y agoLG does the same. I bought good OLED and still, I had to connect pihole to block ads... New LG's are even worse. I don't know what I do if my current TV will stop working. I want only display, I don't want any additional features (ads, personalization etc.).
- hultner 5y agoI have two new LG TVs, never connected them to the internet. I do all my media consumption via a ATV and rpi
- smnrchrds 5y agoMy new Sony TV wouldn't allow me to do anything without connecting it to the internet during initial setup. I just wanted to use it as a dumb screen to show HDMI signal. But even that wouldn't work without initially connecting it to the internet. I haven't connected it to the internet since and so far it hasn't stopped working, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it does as some point and forces me to reconnect and update it.
- danuker 5y agoDid you return it? All manufacturers should be punished for requiring an internet connection for basic features.
- peterangular 5y agoWas in their ecosystem for about four years before going to Google Pixels - I find your experience to be very true. It was truly night and day.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago> before going to Google Pixels Which isn't any better IMO. Most recent Pixels have been a buggy mess from launch. Google doesn't see to give a damn about the quality of their devices which is especially bad considering they come at flagship prices. On the other side, my mom's cheap Samsung A52 has been great so far.
- jchw 5y agoMy experience is that Pixel devices are far and away more competent than Samsung in many regards, but with the caveat that Samsung devices ship in a finished, stable state, but Pixel devices ship as if they’re not quite finished. The software is usually OK, but the hardware tends to be lacking in many regards. This is terrible since hardware can’t really be fixed later down the road, at BEST software workarounds can be employed. The first Pixel was reasonably solid all around and mine lasted quite a while. The Pixel 2 XL’s terrible screen was my first hint that Google was not prepared to carry the torch of a true flagship phone. That said: I would still often prefer the accidentally broken Pixel phones over the intentionally gimped and bloated Samsung phones. I just can’t buy one at launch, because I have no idea how Google will have fucked it up this time.
- rjzzleep 5y agoPixel 1 and 2 were made by HTC. Pixel 2 XL however was manufactured by LG.
- dbrgn 5y agoI have a Pixel 3a and it has been working flawlessly. Best phone I've owned so far. I've heard a lot of complains from Pixel 4a and 6 owners though, about bugs in the OS and drivers... Not sure if these issues are widespread or not.
- silisili 5y agoUsing a Samsung phone now, and you're absolutely right. It's a shitshow. And let's not forget Tizen, who security researchers basically found to be a joke.
- waste_monk 5y agoI used to have Samsung devices, but the quality just got worse and worse... currently quite happy with my LG V20 but it's on its last legs, and when I replace it I want something with a replaceable battery which is quite a rarity on higher-end phones these days. Am aware of the Librem5, but I still want to be inside the Android and google play ecosystem.
- ewoodrich 5y agoOn the other hand, I've owned most Nexus devices and loved stock Android at the time but probably won't be leaving the Samsung ecosystem anytime soon. Until the S6 or so I'd agree it was bloated and unreliable but since then it's been a consistent and reliable experience (with great hardware) and it would take a lot to move back to a Pixel.
- rjzzleep 5y agoI'd argue that most Asian companies don't. China has really stepped up their game there I would say. From what I heard a decade or so ago, they used to hire a lot of software people from the valley to get some of the culture established in their organizations for a short period of time. To some extent I'd say User Experience is directly correlated with how valuable software engineers are in that particular society.
- mnd999 5y agoSame with their smart TVs, decent hardware, awful software.
- hughrr 5y agoA friend of mine just bought a Samsung flagship after grumbling incoherently about how Apple was evil. Within three days she returned it and went and bought an iPhone 13. That’s a fairly good reference for the experience.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- noisy_boy 5y agoI have been using Samsung phone/earbuds/watch for a while now and I think the software experience is quite good (coming from Oxygen OS on OnePlus 6 (great) and having used Apple devices (stifling) in the past ). Their heavy handed UI/UX are things of past - One UI 4 has plenty of customization/useful features while being reasonably light (e.g. it has a feature that lets you force dark mode on apps that don't support it which is surprisingly handy). In terms of integration (which Apple is famed for), everything works seamlessly: when I take out the earbuds, the audio automatically routes to them, the watch syncs automatically with the phone with pretty decent exercise/fitness tracking out of the box, the app selection for the watch has improved due to them using Wear OS etc. Sure, there are some Samsung apps I don't care to use but that is not getting in my way. Their privacy record is a weak point indeed and it is unfortunate that we don't have any competitor in Android space that has the same or better level of polish while keeping privacy a priority.
- tragictrash 5y agoComing from apple, right?
- aceazzameen 5y agoI don't know. Their UX team is infinitely superior to Google's. Didn't always used to be the case.
- getcrunk 5y agoA while wasn't there something about their ssd's encryption (maybe with windows and bitlocker)
- qiqitori 5y agoI personally don't like how it's possible to store data on my device without me being able to access the data. Also most of the time these keys are used for DRM. So... good IMO.
- jesprenj 5y agoExactly my first thoughts. Key is derived from "user-controlled data". That makes sense, it's my phone, isn't it? Why would the phone need to encrypt data in a way that the user can't access it.
- ZiiS 5y agoThe user positive use is securely booting to a password prompt to decrypt your data. Without this security working, anyone who steals your phone will be able to get all the data you have saved on it.
- d-gearloose 5y agoThat's kind of the thing with Microsoft's bitlocker as well. It automatically decrypts the hard drive on boot, so the only thing it could protect you from is someone removing the hard drive and mounting it somewhere else. But if they have physical access to the device, why would they do that?
- dwattttt 5y agoThat's the default configuration for bitlocker, but there are others, including requiring a password or key provided by USB on startup
- vladvasiliu 5y agoI think the idea is that Windows' security, once booted, is enough to protect your data. It's the same situation if, for example, your laptop gets stolen while in sleep / on the lock screen. In theory, you shouldn't be able to get the key while booting on some other media (say, your own Windows USB drive). > Ensuring the integrity of early boot components and boot configuration data. On devices that have a TPM version 1.2 or higher, BitLocker uses the enhanced security capabilities of the TPM to make data accessible only if the computer’s BIOS firmware code and configuration, original boot sequence, boot components, and BCD configuration all appear unaltered and the encrypted disk is located in the original computer. On systems that leverage TPM PCR[7], BCD setting changes deemed safe are permitted to improve usability. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/information-protection/bitlocker/bitlocker-countermeasures https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/informatio...
- llui85 5y agohttps://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1495935700545454084.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1495935700545454084.html
- compsciphd 5y agoI'm wondering if this is related to how people have extracted widevine layer 1 keys?
- jnsact 5y agoi have a samsung phone for about two years now. it reinds me to update the system all the time, almost every month. i dont do the update now. i just ignore it, i dont need fancy new features. i love it not being that smart. i love it the old way.
- 3np 5y agoI have an old Samsung Galaxy S7 that I bricked a year back in the process of trying to make a backup of the data on it (the irony)... I think I may have blown the knox fuse. Could this be leveraged to give me my files back?
- SiebenHeaven 5y agoI am pretty surprised how they allowed reusing IV. Unique IV is explicitly mentioned to be an assumption for AES GCM (first sentence in security section of AES-GCM wikipedia page) How could anyone design TA (i.e application whose whole point is security and hence it runs in the secure mode) and allow user to set IV in the API?
- hannob 5y ago> How could anyone design TA (i.e application whose whole point is security and hence it runs in the secure mode) and allow user to set IV in the API? I mean... TLS did the same (in 1.2, it was fixed in 1.3). I co-authored a paper about it: https://www.usenix.org/conference/woot16/workshop-program/presentation/bock https://www.usenix.org/conference/woot16/workshop-program/pr...
- SiebenHeaven 5y agoThanks for the pointer to your interesting paper. My understanding is that TLS spec did not enforce non-repeating nonce, only suggested it and left it to implementers to decide which led to the vulnerabilities you explored. This Samsung one here is in a way similar - the TEE API had a way for users of the API to set IV which it should not, TA should make sure the IV is not repeated. Since you have done prior research in this area, is using a counter for IV still recommended even when IV is 12 byte? I assume chances of HW random number generator (which I assume exists on most phones today) colliding for 12 byte random number generation would be pretty low.
- PaulHoule 5y agoMy experience is the odds are greater than 50% that people designing a system do the wrong thing with the I.V.'s. The NSA gave up on back doors, limiting the key size, etc. because people are too stupid to manage keys correctly.
- dbrgn 5y agoDon't buy phones from Samsung. They're the worst. They've been #1 on https://dontkillmyapp.com/ https://dontkillmyapp.com/ for a while now.
- zibzab 5y agoAs someone who has been enjoying 3-5 day battery life, i am fine with Samsung killing background apps. And they have a system for whitelisting apps. Also, totally not relevant to the article.
- saiya-jin 5y agoThere are around 1000 other factors in buying phones, mostly much more important to most users. I get it when ie developers are frustrated by inconsistent behavior across phones, but for example I prefer longer battery life compared to something that still runs in the background because I used it few hours ago.
- dbrgn 5y agoThis is also about developer frustration, but not only. Over the years, I've used various alarm clock apps. There were some Huawei phones where it was literally impossible to get those alarm clock apps to work, because even if you added it to all whitelists, it would still kill the app in the background. Another issue is if you're using a messenger with VoIP functionality that you don't use every day. When an incoming call is received after not using the app for a while, it simply wouldn't ring. Stock Android already contains energy saving mechanisms that work reasonably well. By piling potentially broken additional battery saving mechanisms on top of that, you risk breaking the phone for certain use cases. At the very least, as a user of that phone, there should be an easy way to exclude certain apps from energy saving measures. (Let's pick out Huawei again, where even if you added an app to such exclusion lists, after a few days the OS would randomly remove the app from that exclusion list again. Plus, there was some kind of "lock" that you could activate in the app switcher, but that lock wouldn't survive a reboot.) Because some of the energy saving measures are so extreme, some manufacturers put popular apps on internal exclusion lists. These apps work fine, but apps by smaller developers don't. This is a major source of market distortion. Huawei used to be the worst offender in this space, but it has gotten a little bit better by now. Nokia also had a phase where they had a horribly broken energy saver, but thankfully they got rid of that. Samsung has gotten worse and worse over the last years.
- xxpor 5y agoHaving used a lot of Samsung software, I have to wonder if the root cause here is a language barrier. Their software frequently has translation errors, and their kernels are compiled on a computer in Korean Standard Time. For a lot of open source software, or basic introductions into, say, how to use AES-GCM, they're really only available in English reliably. Content in other languages frequently lags or is non existent. I could totally imagine something like Google Translate missing a critical not or similar that completely changes the meaning of a sentence. For technical documentation, that could be a huge problem.