It has been a few months now since Samsung first took the wraps off the Galaxy S3, which besides the excellent hardware specifications of the device came with some new software features that were aimed at making the handset stand out from the crowd. This included the S-Memo app for the Samsung Galaxy S3, and now a Jelly Bean security problem has been found.
We will have a lot of passwords stored on our smartphones but unfortunately nothing can be completely secure when stored digitally, and now an XDA Developers user has noticed the S-Memo application is storing passwords in plain text, which will mean that anyone that knows where to look for the file can access it to read the information.
The user managed to see his Google password with no encryption of any kind in plaintext, but before you go delete the application from your Galaxy S3, there was only access to the application because it was running on a rooted version of the handset.
Although if there was an application installed that was set to allow root privileges it could gain access to where the password was stored on the device. This would include your password to your Google account that would have been used for signing into the S-Memo application.
So there is no immediate threat to rooted Samsung Galaxy S3’s but users should be careful with the applications they give permission for root access to, and for users that have not rooted their Galaxy S3 there shouldn’t be a problem at all. Samsung may also make some changes to the application to beef up security for other users as well.
Do you have a rooted Samsung Galaxy S3?