Backdoor

A back door is a means of access to a computer program that bypasses security mechanisms. A programmer may sometimes install a back door so that the program can be accessed for troubleshooting or other purposes. However, attackers often use back doors that they detect or install themselves, as part of an exploit. In some cases, a worm is designed to take advantage of a back door created by an earlier attack. For example, Nimdagained entrance through a back door left by Code Red.


  
The threat of backdoors surfaced when multiuser and networked operating systems became widely adopted. Petersen and Turn discussed computer subversion in a paper published in the proceedings of the 1967 AFIPS Conference.^[4] They noted a class of active infiltration attacks that use "trapdoor" entry points into the system to bypass security facilities and permit direct access to data. The use of the word trapdoor here clearly coincides with more recent definitions of a backdoor. However, since the advent ofpublic key cryptography the term trapdoor has acquired a different meaning (see trapdoor function), and thus the term "backdoor" is now preferred. More generally, such security breaches were discussed at length in a RAND Corporation task force report published underARPA sponsorship by J.P. Anderson and D.J. Edwards in 1970.

    In January 2014, a backdoor was discovered certain in Samsung Android products, like the Galaxy devices. The Samsung proprietary Android versions are fitted with a backdoor that provides remote access to the data stored on the device. In particular, the Samsung Android software that is in charge of handling the communications with the modem, using the Samsung IPC protocol, implements a class of requests known as remote file server (RFS) commands, that allows the backdoor operator to perform via modem remote I/O operations on the device hard disk or other storage. As the modem is running Samsung proprietary Android software, it is likely that it offers over-the-air remote control that could then be used to issue the RFS commands and thus to access the file system on the device.