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Big Brother At It Again. Security Exploits On Samsung Devices

Here we go again. Your phone is giving away your location and you are not happy about it. Well okay, this time it is a little different. This time it is doing it without even asking you. How dare you phone! An XDA-Developer by the name of pedrodh, has identified an exploit in Samsung devices running AccuWeather, and developed an app for demonstration. The app can pull your geographic location without even granting permissions, not even super-user permissions. It is doing this by using two lines of code.

Accuweather is granted access to your GPS settings, so let’s try to avoid this. Under the AccuWeather settings you can set your location manually.  The developer recommends some remote village in China. Pack your bags, your moving to China. Though if you actually live in a small village in China, DO NOT DO THIS. Obviously we are trying to prevent it finding your location. The second way is gaining root access to your Samsung device and remove the widget entirely. Boom! Solved! Let’s see it find you now!

So hopefully this will help some of you Samsung users out there, to prevent this access that you might not want. The developer has two lines of code if you want to create your own app, or just use his. I do not own a Samsung device, so I guess I am not moving to China.

Source: XDA-Developers