Reading: Samsung issues warning to Galaxy users

Samsung issues warning to Galaxy users

Last updated: 2025/09/18 at 10:01 PM

News Room Published 18 September 2025

Samsung has issued a warning to Galaxy owners with certain phones vulnerable to an attack which allows scammers to run malicious codes on devices. The company has issued a security update and all eligible phones will receive the fix. So, what is going on? (Picture: Getty)

The threat affects devices that run the Android 13 software or newer. The issue, known as CVE-2025-21043, was reported by WhatsApp. A similar fault, known as CVE-2025-55177, affected iPhones just last month, and Samsung said that it was ‘notified that an exploit for this issue has existed in the wild’ (Picture: Getty)

The fault allows hackers to attack remote devices through a code that processes images and takes over the device. However, it is not known yet if this impacts other messengers or just WhatsApp. However, WhatsApp has around three billion users, and it is installed on almost all Galaxy phones (Picture: Getty)

Brian Thornton, sales engineer director for mobile security expert company Zimperium, told Forbes that this zero-day ‘shows just how fast attackers are shifting to mobile as their way in’. He said: ‘In this case, a closed-source image library created a broad risk across Samsung devices and the apps that depend on it’ (Picture: Getty)

Samsung says the risk is an ‘out-of-bounds write in libimagecodec.quram’ which is a third party image handling software. It has previously triggered past security interest from Google’s Project Zero, and both Samsung and WhatsApp have released patches to address this issue for devices running Android versions 13 through 16 (Picture: Getty)

However, it’s not simple to be able to release a phone-wide fix. Pixel or iPhone has an everyone, everywhere update, but it’s more complicated with the Galaxy rollout by model, region and carrier. But as long as your device is on the list, the fix will come – you just need to update and reboot your phone as soon as you can (Picture: Getty)

There are a few signs to indicate your phone has been hacked, such as an usual number of pop-ups appearing, data spikes, unexpected battery drain and your phone becoming a dumber version of itself – it’s slower, battery drains and things look different (Picture: Getty)

According to McAfee, there are a few things you can do when your phone has been hacked which are:

1. Back up essential data
2. Disconnect immediately
3. Run a security scan
4. Delete suspicious apps and files
5. Clear browser cache and data
6. Change your passwords
7. Secure your accounts
8. Update your operating system
9. Perform a full shutdown when needed, disable always-on location features if you’re concerned
10. Perform a factory reset
11. Verify backups before restoring
12. Notify your contacts and authorities

(Picture: Getty Images)

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