A security specialist speaking to Motherboard has called Samsung’s proprietary operating system “a hacker’s dream” after uncovering 40 unknown vulnerabilities.
In the interview, security researcher Amihai Neiderman didn’t pull any punches saying Samsung’s open source OS “may be the worst code I’ve ever seen.”
He says that a number of software vulnerabilities make it easier for hackers to spread malicious code through the TizenStore application and then take control of the device remotely.“You can see that nobody with any understanding of security looked at this code or wrote it. It’s like taking an undergraduate and letting him program your software,” he said.
The implications here are pretty widespread, with 30 million Samsung TV’s running on the OS, which Samsung has developed in the hopes of minimizing their reliance on Google’s Android platform. What’s more, the company’s Gear smartwatch range and certain smartphones also rely on Tizen.
“Tizen is going to be Samsung’s biggest thing. We might see the new Galaxies running Tizen, it could happen that soon. But right now Tizen is not safe enough for that,” Neiderman says.
Neiderman plans to fully detail his findings during an upcoming event at Kaspersky Lab’s Security Analyst Summit next week.
Samsung says it is “fully committed to cooperating with Mr. Neiderman to mitigate any potential vulnerabilities.”
