We recently covered a story in which 67 found some severe vulnerabilities in phones using Exynos chipsets. The vulnerability would let the hackers get access to the phone using just the phone number and Wi-Fi calling and VoLTE were the main concerns in causing this issue. Sadly, the issue was not just limited to Samsung phones as it plagued Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 phones, along with some wearables from Samsung, as well as phones from Vivo. Samsung has finally stated the vulnerability. However, the official fix is still not available.
Samsung will fix the Wi-Fi calling and VoLTE vulnerabilities with April 2023 security update but does not think of these vulnerabilities as severe
The statement is coming from a Community Manager on the forums, and the representative mentioned how Samsung managed to fix some vulnerabilities that had plagued Exynos-powered Samsung phones and more fixes around those vulnerabilities will be coming with April 2023 security update.
You can look at the screenshot below.
It is good that Samsung is finally working on a fix, even though it has been some time since the vulnerability was discovered. What’s interesting is that the moderator claims that none of the vulnerabilities discovered were severe, which goes against what the team over Project Zero claimed about the device in the first place. Four out of 18 security issues were severe enough to grant hackers complete access to a user’s phone and honestly, that does sound severe.
Something is still better than nothing, and while Samsung users are advised to turn off Wi-Fi calling and VoLTE until the patch is finally out, it is worth noting that turning these features off is not a complete safeguard against an attack. However, access to these features is also carrier-specific, wherein not all carriers allow you to access these settings and enable them by default.
If you still want to turn off Wi-Fi calling and VoLTE on your Samsung Galaxy phone, I’d suggest that you check out a guide we did here. It is also worth noting that if you have a Galaxy S22 or other Samsung phones with a Snapdragon chipset, you do not have to worry about running into issues with these vulnerabilities as they are only limited to Exynos-powered devices. Google Pixel 6 and PIxel 7 users also don’t have to worry as Google has patched these vulnerabilities and you are free to use these features.
