Samsung Electronics insists its cloud is secure

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Samsung Electronics insists its cloud is secure

Samsung Electronics insists that its cloud computing product is safe despite the blackmailing of a number of celebrities after their personal information was stolen.

Information from mobile phones, including videos and photos, is often stored automatically on cloud computing systems offered by Samsung, Apple, Google and others. The data can be stolen if a hacker is able to gain access to the device or if they have the login credentials of the user.

It is not clear at this point whether the information stolen from the stars, including Joo Jin-mo, was located on their phones or on a cloud account linked with their phones.

Samsung Electronics argues that cloud hacking shouldn’t be much of a concern, as long as the proper steps are taken.

“Personal information saved on the Samsung cloud is secure in accordance with the Personal Information Protection Act if IDs and passwords aren’t exposed,” argued Samsung Electronics on Friday in a message to its Samsung Members community. “It is speculated some accounts have been exposed and data stolen, not the hacking of Samsung Galaxy smartphones or its cloud.”

Samsung believes that user IDs and passwords have been exposed to a third party and that that party logged in with a different phone and spread the information, including conversations exchanged on the Kakao Talk instant messenger.

Samsung has found no evidence that its cloud system has been directly hacked.

Experts agree on the unlikelihood of the cloud service itself getting hacked.

“Cloud services can’t be perfectly safe from hacking,” said Prof. Kim Seung-joo from Korea University School of Cybersecurity. “But considering the significance of smartphones in the sales of Apple and Samsung, they’re not likely to make the system vulnerable. Security specialists intensively confirm the security, and therefore, isn’t easy for hackers to hack the cloud system.”

After the recent incidents involving celebrities, claims have been made that Apple’s iCloud is less vulnerable to hacking.

The Apple system requires multifactor authentication and confirmation by the user.

If a person learns a user’s ID and password on the Apple system, they have to type in a security code that is sent to the phone. The phone also has to be unlocked.

BY HA SUN-YOUNG [jin.minji@joongang.co.kr]
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