A recently discovered weakness in Samsung’s Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) potentially allowed attackers to remotely wipe the contents of Galaxy S II and III devices, but Samsung has already fixed that problem.
“We would like to assure our customers that the recent security issue concerning the Galaxy S III has already been resolved through a software update. We recommend all Galaxy S III customers download the latest software update, which can be done quickly and easily via the Over-The-Air (OTA) service,” said Samsung in a statement.
All Samsung Galaxy S II and S III owners are advised to download and install the latest update as soon as possible.
The vulnerability was a particularly nasty one, allowing a hacker to remotely wipe nearly all the info, including the SIM card, on the device. This could, however, only happen after the user accesses a malicious site from a QR code, SMS, NFC or WAP message.
September 26, 2012
