Samsung phone users under attack, Google warns

A nasty bug in Samsung's mobile chips is being exploited by miscreants as part of an exploit chain to escalate privileges and then remotely execute arbitrary code, according to Google security researchers. The use-after-free vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2024-44068, and it affects Samsung Exynos mobile processors versions …

[Mentat74]

And then people wonder...

Why I refuse to use a smartphone...

Let alone be stupid enough to do my banking on one of those damn things !

[Mishak]

Because PC are so much more secure?

LOL

[Mentat74]

Re: Because PC are so much more secure?

You can install any OS you want on a pc.... a smartphone... not so much....

On a pc YOU can control what software runs on it... on a smartphone it's all locked down....

I don't trust ANY computer system that doesn't allow a user full control of what's running in the background.

[EricB123]

Dang, yet another reason to be glad I forked out extra for the Qualcomm processor on my Samsung phone a few years ago.

[petef]

Here are two sites that show phones or wearables for each affected Exynos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exynos

https://www.kimovil.com/en/list-smartphones-by-processor-group/exynos-9820

[deevee]

Thanks for the links, so basically its these older and cheaper Exynos models that are affected. I don't know why the Reg couldn't have made that clear in the article.

S10

S20

Z Flip

Note 10

Note 20

M62

F62

A71

A51

x30

vivo s6

M13

M12

A21

A13

A04

A12

XCover 5

F12

F13

[Guy de Loimbard]

Or just do the patch and hope that's addressing the problem at hand.

I think you take your life into your own hands when you use a smartphone.

There are some phone operating systems for Android, but I guess it comes down to the balance of convenience and security that suits your individual requirements.

[deevee]

Is it all too hard for the authors to provide a list of phones, so people know if they are affected or not?

Pretty much no one knows what Exynos CPU is in their phones. They'd be lucky to even know it had an Exynos CPU, let alone the model number.

[markrand]

It's nice to know that my Samsung phone is too old to be affected :D

[jepsis]

"To address this, Samsung has begun rolling out security patches as part of our monthly security maintenance release. We strongly recommend that users keep their devices up-to-date with the latest software updates."

I always believed that monthly security maintenance releases were meant for delivering security patches. Clearly, that hasn't been the case.