A number of smartphone models from Samsung, Google and Chinese manufacturer Vivo can be taken over remotely. This can be done without the user noticing. All a malicious person needs to do this is the phone number of the device he wants to hack. Google warned about this last Friday.
Google researchers discovered 18 security problems, four of which were very serious. The vulnerabilities are in certain Exynos processors from Samsung. Devices from the Google Pixel 6 and 7 smartphone series are equipped with them but also, for example, the Samsung Galaxy S22 and Galaxy A53.
"We released security updates for five of these vulnerabilities in March," said a Samsung spokesperson. "Another update will be released in April to fix the remaining vulnerability." Google, meanwhile, has made a patch available for its Pixel smartphones.
According to Google, users of affected smartphones can protect themselves from the vulnerabilities even without a security update. They can do so, according to the tech company, by turning off Voice over LTE (VoLTE, calling over the 4G network) and Voice over wifi (VoWiFi, calling over Wi-Fi networks) in their phone's settings. On Samsung phones, this is possible through the settings buttons in the notification bar.
