Samsung Message Guard quarantines attached images in messages that may contain malicious code.
Samsung unveiled a new security feature for its Galaxy line of tablets and smartphones designed to protect users from Zero-click exploits. They are called “zero-click” cyberattacks because they masquerade as images embedded in messages and install spyware and other malware without any interaction from the user.Such cyberattacks have become increasingly common in recent times. One of the most notorious zero-click attacks was discovered by developer Citizen Lab in 2022, after attackers used an iOS/iMessage security flaw to install NSO’s Pegasus spyware on the phones of journalists, politicians and activists between 2017 and 2022.
Zero-click attacks leave little trace, and victims may not even realize their phone has been hacked. Even a security measure such as end-to-end encryption of messages can make them difficult to detect in some cases, because then the data can only be viewed by the sender and the recipient.
Samsung claims that their new Message Guard feature can prevent such attacks – it will automatically send PNG, JPG/JPEG, GIF, ICO, WEBP, BMP and WBMP images to “quarantine. When your Galaxy device receives a text message with an attached image, the antivirus will isolate and scan the file to make sure it cannot infect your device.
The feature will be available on phones in the Galaxy S23 series, and later this year will roll out to other Galaxy smartphones and tablets with One UI 5.1 or later. Message Guard works in Samsung Messages and Messages (Google); and will later become available for third-party messaging programs through a software update. According to Samsung, Message Guard does not need to be activated and will run “silently and almost invisibly in the background.”
