Last night we first brought word to you that a few of Samsung’s new high-end devices are vulnerable to a new kernel exploit and that it affected both root and un-rooted devices. Then earlier this morning we followed up with another story that featured even more devices being vulnerable to the exploit. Here’s the current list of devices affected by this exploit:
- Samsung Galaxy S2 GT-I9100
- Samsung Galaxy S3 GT-I9300
- Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE GT-I9305
- Samsung Galaxy Note GT-N7000
- Samsung Galaxy Note 2 GT-N7100
- Verizon Galaxy Note 2 SCH-I605 (with locked bootloaders)
- Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 GT-N8000
- Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 GT-N8010
Today, Samsung has told many Android-related sites that have posted this story that they are “currently in the process of conducting an internal review” regarding this exploit. So while it’s not a whole lot of information right now, it does let us know that Samsung is indeed aware of the issue and they are checking out the cause of it. So we should start seeing fixes coming in the form of an OTA very soon. Luckily only the US Galaxy Note 2’s are affected, because we all know how slow carriers are here in the US with pushing out updates.
So how can I protect my device?
Well it’s really quite simple. There are fixes available already, but you can also just not install any of those fishy looking apps from the Play Store and definitely don’t install any from “unknown sources”. We’ve said this before on several podcasts and in many other articles. A good idea when looking at a new app is to check out the reviews, if there aren’t any, don’t download the app. Wait until there are a few more reviews. Because if it’s a bad app, users will write a bad review on the Play Store and that helps all of us out.
Hopefully we’ll see a fix out soon, but the tip above is something you should keep in mind anyways. Whether or not there is an exploit available for your device. It’s mostly just common sense. If we hear anything else, we’ll be sure to update you on this.