The Samsung Galaxy S23 just got hacked big time - should you be worried?

An unofficial render of the Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus
(Image credit: @OnLeaks / SmartPrix)

Two groups of white hat hackers have managed to break into the Samsung Galaxy S23 flagship smartphone with the latest software and security updates installed, granting them the ability to execute all kinds of code on the device.

The demos happened during the Pwn2Own 2023 hacking contest that’s currently taking place in Toronto, Canada. The first group to successfully break into the Galaxy S23 device was Pentest Limited. By exploiting an improper input validation vulnerability, the group gained code execution ability, as well as a $50,000 reward from the organizers.

The second group to achieve a similar result was STAR Labs SG, which exploited a permissive list of allowed inputs, and earned them a $25,000 reward.

23 vulnerabilities

On the second day of the event, security researcher Le Xich Long, as well as researchers from Interrupt labs, will also be probing into the device, BleepingComputer added.

Besides hacking Samsung’s flagships, the event’s participants also found and demonstrated zero-day vulnerabilities in the Xiaomi 13 Pro, various printers, smart speakers, Network Attached Storage (NAS) endpoints, and surveillance cameras, from popular manufacturers such as Western Digital, QNAP, Synology, Canon, Lexmark, and Sonos.

On the first day, the participants demoed 23 zero-day vulnerabilities, earning a total of $438,750 in rewards. 

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Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.

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