Users of Samsung’s Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, and Galaxy S6 Edge Plus in Canada will be happy to know that those devices are now beginning to be brought up to date with the November 2017 security patch. For clarity, two of the above-listed devices, the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, first began seeing the update in Canada and elsewhere earlier this month. However, as always, these kinds of rollouts do tend to take quite some time – often several weeks – to hit everybody. In this case, the rollout is happening simultaneously across Bell, Telus, SaskTel, and Virgin mobile, which could add to the amount of time that takes.
Once the patch is installed, it takes care of several security vulnerabilities. Perhaps most prominently, and although this patch number is said to have not fixed the problem when released to other regions, this is the patch which will reportedly fix at least one major exploit called KRACK in Canada. That exploit is particularly nasty since it can affect nearly every Wi-Fi compatible device that hasn’t been patched and allows access to data transmitted by an individual over a Wi-Fi network. Beyond that, it actually patches no fewer than 61 Android-specific vulnerabilities and a further six that affect Samsung-branded devices in particular. Meanwhile, the update itself will take the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge to build number G920W8VLS5DQK1, while the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge Plus lands at build number G928W8VLS4CQK1. Fortunately, even though the update will not bring any new user-facing features with it, it will at least make the three devices in question much more secure.
It bears repeating that updates do generally take several days or longer to roll out. So users should not be too concerned if this one hasn’t hit their own device just yet. In the meantime, a check for the update manually may help with that and is easy enough to do. To check for the update, Samsung Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, and S6 Edge Plus owners simply need to navigate to their settings application and head over to the ‘Software Updates’ section of that application. Within that menu, there should be a button to check for updates. There’s no guarantee that will speed things up, but it may be worth a shot.