All Exynos 4210 and 4412-based handsets are affected

Dec 19, 2012 20:21 GMT  ·  By

South Korean mobile phone maker Samsung Electronics has officially confirmed the presence of a security issue with some of its Galaxy devices, and has also announced that it was working on a fix for it.

The security issue was found to affect devices powered by Exynos 4210 and 4412 processors, which includes Sprint’s Galaxy S II, and the international versions of Galaxy S II, Galaxy S III, and Galaxy Note, as well as the Galaxy Note II.

Furthermore, it seems that the company’s tablet PCs and other devices powered by the Exynos 4 processors are affected by this bug as well, including Galaxy Player models, Galaxy Camera, Galaxy Tab II devices and the Galaxy Note 10.1.

The US flavor of Galaxy S III is said to be safe, but all other devices that use Samsung’s SoCs are vulnerable to the issue.

The good news, however, is that Samsung is aware of the situation, and that it is already working on a fix for it.

“Samsung is aware of the potential security issue related to the Exynos processor and plans to provide a software update to address it as quickly as possible,” the company told Android Central.

However, the company also explained that the security flaw can be exploited only by malicious applications that are installed on the affected devices.

“The issue may arise only when a malicious application is operated on the affected devices; however, this does not affect most devices operating credible and authenticated applications,” the company said.

Samsung will continue to closely monitor the situation until the software fix has been made available to all affected mobile devices.”

Samsung has already sold tens of millions of the aforementioned Galaxy devices, and it was expected to respond fast to this problem. However, it still remains to be seen how fast the fix will be delivered to users.