Samsung’s flagship telephones had been quietly in danger from adware for a yr

If there’s one factor everybody values on any smartphone, whether or not it is an Android or an iPhone, it is security. We preserve quite a lot of private information on our telephones these days, and the very last thing anybody needs is their private data falling into the flawed palms. Nevertheless, although our telephones are always up to date with new firmware and safety patches, it is all the time doable for a safety vulnerability to slide by means of the cracks, and that is sadly what just lately occurred with Samsung.

Whereas Samsung Galaxy phones are identified for his or her sturdy security measures, together with Samsung Knox, a brand new report reveals that the telephones had been susceptible to a significant malware assault for almost a yr (by way of Ars Technica). The invention was made by cybersecurity researchers at Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 division, who uncovered the adware vulnerability, which they’ve named “Landfall.”

The Android adware particularly focused Samsung Galaxy telephones, with the attackers exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Samsung’s Android picture processing library to deploy the adware for surveilling and extracting information from customers, together with microphone recording, location monitoring, messages, and name logs.

In keeping with Unit 42, Landfall remained an lively vulnerability on Samsung telephones for months, remaining undetected till Samsung was alerted about it and patched it in April 2025. Unit 42 believes that the Landfall adware assault was primarily utilized in 2024 and early 2025 for “focused intrusion actions within the Center East.”

What’s a zero-day vulnerability?

It is a safety flaw that builders had been unaware of till it was exploited

In the event you’re unfamiliar with what a zero-day vulnerability is, it is a safety flaw that’s exploited earlier than the developer even is aware of about it. This implies they’ve had zero days to repair it, so time is of the essence.

What made this Landfall adware assault notably malicious is that it could possibly be deployed with out the person even being conscious of it. How is that this doable? On this case, Unit 42 found that Landfall contaminated customers’ telephones by means of a malicious DNG picture file containing adware, which could possibly be despatched by way of a messaging app like WhatsApp.

Landfall is known as a “zero-click” assault as a result of the person does not must take any motion. Merely processing the picture for show would trigger the cellphone to routinely and unknowingly load the adware, which exploited the vulnerability in Samsung’s Android picture processing library that I discussed earlier. This basically signifies that the adware could possibly be put in on a cellphone with out the person ever being conscious of it.

Unit 42 was in a position to uncover the existence of Landfall after it observed that two comparable safety flaws had been patched for iOS and WhatsApp. It was additionally in a position to establish the focused machine fashions for this assault, which included the Samsung Galaxy S23 and S24 sequence, the Galaxy S22, the Galaxy Z Fold 4, and the Z Flip 4.

It is value reiterating that Landfall is not an lively risk, as Samsung patched the vulnerability in April 2025 with a safety replace. Due to this fact, you probably have a Samsung cellphone and have stored it up to date this yr, you don’t have anything to fret about. To simply test for the most recent updates in your Samsung cellphone, you may go to Settings > Software program replace > Obtain and Set up.