Samsung platform certification by the University of Porto

The Competence Centre on Cybersecurity and Privacy of the University Of Porto (C3P), based at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto (FCUP), contributed to the Samsung Knox certification alongside the National Security Office. 

It took C3P 220 hours to perform functional and cryptographic assessment tests in order to demonstrate the adequate degree of security of the said platform, which aggregates defence and safety mechanisms against malwares and vulnerabilities.

The coordinator of C3P, Luís Antunes, presented the Samsung Knox certification process and explained that the update processes were examined, particularly the cryptographic handshakes, the data sensitive encapsulating process of Knox, not allowing the execution of malicious applications, as well as the verification of Android's boottime scan flow, using Common Criteria tools.

Samsung has also submitted this platform to an audit that took over 170 hours of functional and cryptographic assessment by other experts of the University of Porto, namely former student of the Faculty of Sciences of the UP, André Batista, recognised as "the most valuable hacker in the world", in a competition held this year in the USA.

The Samsung equipment protected by Knox are Note 8, S9 and S8+ and S7 Flat, A8, and the 2017 A5, J7 and J5. Also, the Tab S3, the Active2 and Tab A.