It seems that according to a security report from the Replicant developers, it looks as though there might be certain Samsung Galaxy models featuring a particular chipset that might actually have a backdoor in them that would allow third parties to access your phone without your permission and knowledge.
As it stands, the developers found that the phones affect include: Galaxy Note 2, Galaxy S3, Galaxy S2, Galaxy S, Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, and Galaxy 2 7.0. Based on their findings, the modem’s baseband software “implements a backdoor that lets the modem perform remote file I/O operations on the file system.”
Basically what this means is that whoever gets access to your phone will be able to read, write, and even delete files on your phone’s storage system. Replicant’s developer, Paul Kocialkowski even suggested that this backdoor could basically turn your mobile device into a spying device that listens in on your and tracks your location.
Samsung themselves have yet to comment on this issue and we’re not sure if there are any immediate plans on releasing a fix for it, but the good news is that Replicant has developed an Android ROM of their own which has patched the modem chip’s security flaw. If you own any of the affected devices, perhaps running Replicant’s ROM might be a good idea for now, at least until Samsung gets it fixed.