A somewhat disturbing and malicious hack was recently discovered that essentially allowed hackers multiple ways to completely wipe your Samsung Galaxy S III (and other Galaxy devices) using a simple line of code all remotely. This means they could erase your entire device with ease. Today however Samsung has released a statement to ease the minds of the millions and millions of owners.
With more than 20 million Galaxy S III phones sold, 10 million and counting Galaxy Note’s, and many other Galaxy devices running the version of Touch Wiz UX said to be vulnerable — this was a big deal. Security researchers found an exploit that could do some serious harm with ease but many trying to replicate the scenario had mixed results.
Either way the fear was emails, text messages, even QR codes and NFC tags could all be used to send this single line of code that would then wipe users handsets without them having any other interaction with the device. Pretty out of control. Samsung has confirmed the problem has in fact been fixed in previous patches — and that we should carry on without concern. Our sister site SlashGear reached out to Samsung and here’s what they got in return:
We would like to assure our customers that the recent security issue concerning the GALAXY S III
has already been resolved through a software update” Samsung told SlashGear today. “We recommend all GALAXY S III customers to download the latest software update, which can be done
quickly and easily via the Over-The-Air (OTA) service.”
Referring to their update program Samsung Kies, all the updates as of late should have patched this small (big) problem and the exploit has been locked up tight. If you notice however, they only mention the Galaxy S III in their statement. The Galaxy S II (most models) Galaxy Beam, Galaxy Ace and many others were all effected as well. Hopefully we hear more details on their updates soon too.
[via SlashGear]
