What Samsung Mobile Users in India Should Do as Indian Government Alerts About Significant Security Risk
The Indian government has issued more security warnings this week, and this time they’re aimed at people using Samsung Galaxy phones. A security alert issued by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) details several vulnerabilities affecting millions of Samsung Galaxy phones, both old and new models. A security alert has been issued on December 13 and the concern has been classified as high risk, so it is imperative that current Samsung users update their phone’s operating system or firmware immediately.
Samsung Phones High Security Risk: All Information
The Security Agency points out that the problem has been caused by incorrect access control of Knox features, an integer overflow error in the facial recognition software, authorization problems in the AR Emoji application, and incorrect handling of errors in the Knox data security software. In addition to these, different system components may have several memory corruption vulnerabilities and incorrect data size checking in the softsimd library.
These issues have affected the Android 11, 12, 13 and 14 software versions that run on countless Samsung Galaxy phones on the market. Considering the number of phones running these Android versions, the issue is definitely a concern on a large scale.
So what happens if these problems are exploited? The security note then explains the potential problems if an attacker is able to bypass these vulnerabilities. The agency says these issues “could allow an attacker to trigger a heap overflow and stack-based buffer overflow, access the device’s SIM PIN, send a broadcast with elevated privileges, read AR Emoji sandbox data, bypass Knox Guard lock variable system time, access arbitrary files , access sensitive information, execute arbitrary code, and compromise the targeted system.”
Samsung Galaxy phones security problem: how to protect yourself
Samsung has already released a software patch to fix these issues, and anyone using a Samsung phone running Android 11 or higher should check for the update right away. Here’s how to check on your phone:
– Go to your Samsung Galaxy phone settings
– Scroll down to software update
– Tap Update to check the new version
– Install the new update and restart the phone
If you do not have the update, you should be extra careful when opening links or files from unknown sources. Also, make sure you download apps from trusted app stores and don’t download apps from the site until the security issue on your device is fixed.
