Samsung Galaxy App Store has a security risk: update right away

Samsung Galaxy phones generally rely on the Play Store for most apps, but you also have the company’s own Galaxy Store with its own set of apps like Samsung Pay, Wallet and more. A report came out this week stating that the Galaxy App Store has a security issue that should not be ignored by anyone using a Samsung Galaxy phone.

The details related to the issue have been shared by cybersecurity firm NCC Group. The company’s researchers found the vulnerability last year in the Galaxy Store during the period from November 23 to December 3. It was even assigned a Common Vulnerability and Exposures number CVE-2023-21433.

So what security risk has been mentioned by the NCC Group? Researchers claim that the problem in Galaxy Store is serious enough to allow malicious parties to access the data stored on the device. Users may see the apps crash, which could be a sign that their device has been affected by the vulnerability.

The risk also means that the attacker could install any app on the affected device without the person being aware of such activity.

The underlying problem of the vulnerability is that if a user clicks on an unknown link via Google Chrome or the malicious app, the attacker now has control over the operations. In such cases, you also risk losing confidential data and in some cases money stolen from accounts.

Samsung is definitely concerned about the issue, which appears to be affecting devices running on Android 12 version or earlier.

Fortunately, the company has been proactive in rolling out the Android 13 update over the past few months, reducing the number of devices that could fall prey to this vulnerability. In addition, Samsung has already released an updated version of the Galaxy Store 4.5.49.8, which addresses the issue reported by the cybersecurity company. You can too if your device got an official Android 13 OS upgrade from the company which also protects you from this issue.

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