Samsung Galaxy S III remote reset exploit discovered
Sometimes a word or sentence is enough to destroy friendships and relationships. In computing, pressing Y instead of N can create a nightmare for even the most experienced IT Pro. So it would be very frustrating if Samsung allowed a single line of code to be remotely executed, wiping your near full Galaxy S III, wouldn’t it?
Security researchers have discovered that one line of code is all it takes to start an unstoppable factory-reset of the S III, opening the possibilities for malicious websites to completely wipe the handset, restoring it to it’s out of the box experience.
Ravi Borgaonkar showed the hack at the Ekoparty security conference with a simple USSD code. He said that the code could be sent from a website, pushed to the handset by NFC or triggered by a QR code. And it’s not just the Galaxy S III that’s affected; other Samsung handsets are affected too. The user will see the process taking place, but hitting back won’t stop the reset.
