Security flaw in millions of Galaxy phones with Exynos chip
There is a major problem with Samsung phones that use the Exynos chip and Mali GPU. It concerns a security weakness that came to light in November 2022. Hackers exploit this weakness in a kind of chain reaction attack. In this way, people using Samsung Internet were sent to malicious websites, with all the consequences that entailed.
Exynos weakness
SamMobile writes that almost every Samsung device that uses an Exynos chip suffers from this security flaw. Google’s threat analysis group, TAG, has released the chain used to exploit the weak online today. This chain exploits all kinds of weaknesses in the Samsung Internet and Chrome internet browsers. Problematic, because Samsung uses Chromium, which means that hackers can even hack into your system.
Cyber criminals send a text message with a link to Samsung Galaxy phones in the United Arab Emirates, which would take users to a page where some kind of Android spyware package was waiting for them. A package that ensures that data from chat and browser apps was deciphered.
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The solution? Samsung
These include reported vulnerabilities CVE-2022-4262, CVE-2022-3038, CVE-2022-22706, and CVE-2023-0266. Two of them are due to Chrome and have since been fixed by Google. Samsung has taken care of the other two and provided Samsung Internet with an update. The chain broke and the problem was solved.
At least, you would think so. In practice, this turns out to be slightly different. One link in the chain, the Mali security vulnerability (CVE-2022-22706) is not patched at all on Samsung devices with the Exynos chip and Mali GPU. Mali has already done its job: the fix came in January, but Samsung has yet to come up with a firmware update to ensure that those millions of devices are also safer again. However, it has not yet done so, while it is aware of this problem. Hopefully the Korean telephone supplier will come up with a solution soon. If it took the first steps, why not the last?
Do you have a Samsung with an Exynos chip and a Mali GPU? are you worried? Leave it now in the comments.
