Samsung, right behind Google, has just detailed the security patch that it will be rolling out to its own devices this month. Samsung’s security patch includes all of the vulnerabilities that Google fixed in its own security patch, along with some others that are specific to Samsung devices – this usually means those found in Samsung’s Touchwiz or Samsung Experience interface. While there are 215 vulnerabilities in Google’s security patch, there are only 6 additional ones in Samsung’s version.
Now as is the case generally for Samsung and other manufacturers when talking about vulnerabilities, Samsung did not go into full detail on these vulnerabilities. That is to protect those that have not received or have not updated their devices with this latest security patch. As companies don’t want to put out the full details of a vulnerability when hackers could use that to hack devices. Which makes sense, but it does leave many customers wondering what Samsung may have fixed or not fixed in their devices. With these vulnerabilities being patched, it means that your Samsung device is going to be a bit more safer than it was on an earlier patch – which most are still on the August patch, since Samsung was working on patching the Blueborne issue that creeped up in September.
Samsung doesn’t update every model in its lineup every single month. Usually these security updates are pushed out about every other month. And that’s mostly due to the sheer number of smartphone models that Samsung has, along with the different SKU’s for each carrier – at least in the US – and each of those need to go through certification from Google as well as the appropriate carrier, which can take quite a bit of time. So if your Samsung device doesn’t get the update this month, it’ll more than likely be near the top of the list for the November 2017 update, which is only a few weeks away now. Samsung will likely start with the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8 devices for the October update and move on from there. Of course, unlocked devices will likely get the update ahead of others.