Google’s Project Zero team has discovered 18 zero-day vulnerabilities impacting the Samsung Exynos modems—four of which enable remote code execution. Let’s talk about what this issue does, and what needs to be done to minimize risk.

These Threats are Severe and Need to Be Addressed

Without going too far into the weeds, some of these vulnerabilities—which, in addition to mobile devices, were also identified in wearables and vehicles—can be carried out with the attacker only knowing the target’s phone number and can give the attacker access to the device with no need for the target to provide access. In fact, a vulnerable device could be compromised without the target even being made aware.

Samsung’s list of impacted devices includes:

• Samsung mobile devices, including those in the S22, M33, M13, M12, A71, A53, A33, A21, A13, A12 and A04 series
• Vivo mobile devices, including those in the S16, S15, S6, X70, X60 and X30 series
• Google’s Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 series

Plus, any wearables that use the Exynos W920 chipset and vehicles with the Exynos Auto T5123 chipset are also impacted. It is also important to note that this is by no means an exhaustive list.

Patches Aren’t All Available as Of Yet, But There is a Fix

Because this issue impacts devices from so many vendors and manufacturers, patches aren’t necessarily available for everything that is going to be impacted. However, you should disable Wi-Fi calling and Voice-over-LTE to prevent the threat, and update your devices when patches are released.

For most of the common smartphones, like the recent Google Pixel phones and Samsung Galaxy phones, these updates were pushed out in the March security patch. If you own these devices, you need to make sure you apply these updates because not doing so will leave your device extremely vulnerable to attack.

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Reach out to us for any assistance needed with implementing these fixes, or any of the rest of your IT. Call us at (604) 513-9428 today for help.