As bugs go, it does not get any worse than this: A newly discovered vulnerability in Samsung’s Exynos modems permits hackers to take over telephones with none intervention from the cellphone’s house owners.
Google Venture Zero discovered a complete of 18 zero-day vulnerabilities in Samsung’s Exynos modems in late 2022 and early 2023. 4 of these permit the hackers to remotely compromise the customers’s cellphone, and solely require that they know the sufferer’s cellphone quantity. Google claims that expert attackers may be capable to “shortly create an operational exploit to compromise affected gadgets silently and remotely.”
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The listing of telephones which might be weak is sort of lengthy: Samsung S22, M33, M13, M12, A71, A53, A33, A21, A13, A12 and A04 sequence, Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 sequence, and Vivo S16, S15, S6, X70, X60 and X30 sequence.
Moreover, any wearables that use the Exynos W20 chipset (these embrace the Pixel Watch 4 and 5, for instance), and any autos that use the Exynos Auto T5123 chipset are weak too.
The silver lining for Samsung Galaxy S22 house owners is that telephones from that sequence which might be bought within the U.S. have a Qualcomm chipset as an alternative of Samsung’s Exynos chipset, and are subsequently not weak. Galaxy S22 house owners in Europe aren’t so fortunate. Additionally, Google fastened the vulnerability on Pixel 7 telephones with its March 2023 safety patch, although 9to5Google(Opens in a brand new tab) notes that the Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Professional, and Pixel 6a are nonetheless weak.
Luckily, there’s a manner for customers to quickly treatment the problem by turning off Wi-Fi calling and Voice-over-LTE of their machine’s settings. This may lead to barely decrease voice name high quality, nevertheless it a minimum of means your cellphone is secure till an official patch is offered.
