Google has found 11 ‘high-impact security issues’ inside the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, but how severe are they and will you be affected if you own the Galaxy S6 Edge?
Google’s Project Zero team recently reported that it had found almost a dozen serious flaws in the Galaxy S6 Edge back in July 2015 that could allow hackers access to confidential data, including contacts and messages. In theory, someone could tap into your S6 Edge and forward your emails to another account, crash your phone and perform other nasties.
The Project Zero team exclaimed its surprise at how easy it was to find and exploit these issues simply by examining the Galaxy S6 Edge’s code, with the weakest areas being the device drivers and the phone’s media processing functionality.
However, Project Zero reported these issues to Samsung as soon as it found them and already eight of the eleven vulnerabilities have been addressed by Samsung in its October Maintenance Release. The final three issues, which are of a lower severity, are expected to be fixed in this month’s release.
To sum up, any Galaxy S6 Edge owners should make sure they keep their phone up-to-date to limit the chance of an attack, installing Samsung’s updates as soon as they are available. To do this, head to Settings > About Device > Software Update. Then, tap ‘Update now’. Any available updates will be downloaded and installed (which requires a reboot), else you’ll receive a ‘the latest updates have already been installed’ message.
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