Samsung's Answer to Zero-Click Image Exploits Is a Galaxy S23 'Sandbox'

pcmag.com:

Samsung is set to protect Galaxy S23 owners from zero-click exploits involving images using a new virtual quarantine feature called Message Guard.

The threat being countered here comes in the form of malicious images that require no interaction from the user to compromise your device (a zero-click exploit). Samsung says(Opens in a new window) there has been "no sign of such attacks" on Galaxy smartphones yet, but it's going to pre-emptively protect against them.

Message Guard works by automatically placing any image file your phone receives into a virtual quarantine, otherwise known as a "sandbox." That way, it doesn't matter if the image carries a malicious payload as it can't access anything outside of the sandbox—the threat is automatically neutralized.

To begin with Samsung is only making Message Guard available to Galaxy S23 owners, where it will protect against malicious images sent to Samsung Messages and Messages by Google. The image formats it protects against include PNG, JPG/JPEG, GIF, ICO, WEBP, BMP, and WBMP.

Samsung also plans to roll out Message Guard to other Galaxy smartphones and tablets running One UI 5.1 or higher later this year. So eventually, this protection will become a standard feature across the entire range of Samsung's Galaxy devices.

Meanwhile, another feature recently discovered that seems to be exclusive to the S23 series is the ability to bypass charging the battery in order to allow the phone to run cooler and consume significantly less power during gaming sessions. Combined with Message Guard, such features may help push the S23 ahead of the iPhone 14 as the ultimate flagship phone for some consumers.

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