While the September security patch is still rolling out to some Samsung’s devices, the South Korean tech giant is already hard at work continuing its monthly Security Maintenance Release (SMR) procedure. Earlier today, the company announced that the October security patch for its devices will include both Google and Samsung’s fixes, just as expected. So, other than the vanilla October patch, what’s new?
Just like in previous months, Samsung Mobile has fixed several software-specific vulnerabilities for all of its supported devices, as well as improved the overall stability of the Android experience on its smartphones. Among other things, the company’s representatives revealed that the upcoming patch fixes the so-called “Qjpeg” decode function which sometimes caused a complete system crash when tasked to decode a corrupted image. Just like with most crashes, this was caused by bad memory management which has now been remedied. In addition to that, Samsung Mobile’s developers also fixed a certain vulnerability in frame buffer interface results responsible for projecting graphics. In addition to posing a security risk, this issue was also capable of causing kernel crashes in all Exynos-powered Samsung smartphones. The security patch changelog explains that his has now been fixed with proper implementation practices but doesn’t go into any particular details regarding the thereof. Both of these issues were privately disclosed to Samsung Mobile’s developers in May and June so this is actually the first time we’re even hearing about them.
The October security patch will fix seven Samsung Vulnerabilities and Exposures (SVE) in total but the other five remain undisclosed at the moment. While no exact release date for the rollout has been given, it’s expected this update will start rolling out to flagship Samsung smartphones in the next few days. The company asked its consumers for patience and explained that just like in previous months, delivery time heavily depends on the exact model of their device and the region they’re located in. In case you own a Samsung device that’s expected to receive a regular OS upgrade in the next few days, note that this may further delay all of the planned security updates.