Researchers say more phones could be vulnerable

Aug 8, 2018 09:57 GMT  ·  By

Just when we thought that the Meltdown and Spectre saga is coming to an end, here’s a discovery that isn’t by any means good news for Samsung customers.

The Galaxy S7, which is one of the most successful flagship phones released by the South Korean phone maker, is vulnerable to a Meltdown attack that could eventually provide hackers with access to stored data.

The discovery was made by researchers from Austria’s Graz Technical University and it will be detailed at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, according to a Reuters report.

More phones potentially vulnerable

The more worrying thing is that the same Meltdown attack could be effective against other phones as well, and the researchers say they are looking into the matter to determine how many devices may be exposed.

“There are potentially even more phones affected that we don’t know about yet,” researcher Michael Schwarz was quoted as saying by the cited source. “There are potentially hundreds of million of phones out there that are affected by Meltdown and may not be patched because the vendors themselves do not know.”

On the other hand, Samsung has already developed a patch for the Galaxy S7 and the rollout started in July, according to a company spokesperson. However, no specifics were provided regarding the number of devices exposed to attacks, though the spokeswoman emphasized that no other phone models developed by the company are vulnerable.

Additionally, there were no Galaxy S7 units hacked with the said Meltdown attack, she added.

The Meltdown and Spectre chip vulnerabilities were disclosed in January and most companies have already released patches to correct them and prevent exploits. By the looks of things, however, additional mitigations are required, and it remains to be seen how many phones are potentially vulnerable to this new Meltdown attack and how easy it is for cybercriminals to employ it.