Samsung Keylogger Stories a False Alarm

Trailrunner7 writes "The panic that arose yesterday about Samsung allegedly shipping laptops that contained a pre-installed keylogger turns out to have been a complete mistake after further investigation by security researchers and the company itself. In fact, the controversy was the result of a false positive from one commercial antimalware suite and nothing else. Several outlets reported on Wednesday that Samsung laptops had been found to contain a keylogger known as StarLogger right out of the box from the factory. However, upon closer inspection by security companies, the folder on the laptops that supposedly contained the malware was actually a directory that is part of Windows' multi-language support."

Re:Makes no sense

[Anonymous Coward]

It was confirmed by a low level support person who may or may not have understood what was going on.

All the PR and Legal depts had "No Comment" till it was more thoroughly researched.

Re:Appropriate quote

[mlts]

I have found that AdBlock does far more to keep malware off a system than any antivirus program out there. Couple that with a decent firewall/NAT box/router, common sense about not running downloaded stuff, and a solid backup system, and that will pretty much make for malware-free computer usage. Using sandboxie doesn't hurt either.

Re:Slovenian StarLogger

[jcla]

I checked my newly purchased Samsung laptop last night after I saw the article and it had the /sl folder on it, but it took about half a second and an ounce of brainpower to notice that there was a large number of similar directories that all looked like language/country codes. And they all had the same kind of non-executable file in them. I'm not Slovenian. J

Re:epic FAIL

[recoiledsnake]

First line of the article:

Mohamed Hassan, MSIA, CISSP, CISA is the founder of NetSec Consulting Corp, a firm that specializes in information security consulting services. He is a senior IT Security consultant and an adjunct professor of Information Systems in the School of Business at the University of Phoenix

Then a whole lot of fluff about the Sony root kit fiasco.

The money quote:

The findings are false-positive proof since I have used the tool that discovered it for six years now and I am yet to see it misidentify an item throughout the years.

That seems to be some very concrete proof.

Then some ramblings about how a class action lawsuit will come out of this. I too smell a lawsuit but not against Samsung.

Knee-jerk response is awesome

[ashidosan]

John Graham-Cumming has an excellent, level-headed response [jgc.org] to Mohamed Assan's entire "research."

Also confirmed at F-Secure [f-secure.com].