Samsung Domain ssuggest.com Expires

[chris]

An interesting case of an old domain used by Samsung for app deployment expiring. I don't know much about this, and haven't seen it mentioned on many sites yet...

It's unclear to me if they "forgot to renew the domain" as the headline below suggests, or that they intentionally let it drop ("The company says it discontinued S Suggest in 2014, and it recently let one of the domains used to control the app—ssuggest.com—expire"). Either way, a good reminder on how critical domains could potentially be exploited.

Samsung Left Millions Vulnerable to Hackers Because It Forgot to Renew a Domain, Researchers Say

Samsung, the most popular smartphone maker in the world, left millions of customers vulnerable to hackers after it let expire a domain that was used to control a stock app installed on older devices, security researchers say.

If you own an older Samsung smartphone, chances are you have a stock app designed to recommend other popular apps named S Suggest installed on it. The company says it discontinued S Suggest in 2014, and it recently let one of the domains used to control the app—ssuggest.com—expire, according to a security researcher who took over the domain.

By letting the domain expire, Samsung effectively gave anyone willing to register it a foothold inside millions of smartphones, and the power to push malicious apps on them, according to João Gouveia, the chief technology officer at Anubis Labs. Gouveia says he took over the domain Monday.

You can read the full article here:

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/...o-hackers-because-it-forgot-to-renew-a-domain