January security patch starts seeding to Samsung Galaxy flagships with over 70 security fixes
Samsung has started pushing its flagship phones’ first security patch for January 2024. Users have already spotted the package in Europe. Galaxy S23 owners can look out for firmware version S91xBXXS3BWL3, while S22 and S21 devices should be getting versions S90xBXXS7DWL3 and G99xBXXS9FWL9 respectively. The update seems to weigh around 400MB and seems very “dense,” for lack of a better term.
Looking at the official patch notes, we can see that Samsung squashed one critical security issue and a whopping 67 other ones labeled as “High” priority by the Korean giant.
Reading a bit into the notes themselves, we see that there was apparently a vulnerability in Samsung’s Bluetooth pairing process that would allow attackers to establish a pairing process without user interaction. Another interesting bug would potentially allow Samsung DeX users in multi-user environments to access another user’s notifications.
It is unclear whether this update features a screen burn-in protection measure that Samsung had previously promised to arrive in January.
As mentioned, the new January security patch has already been spotted on flagship Galaxy devices in Europe and should be coming to the US shortly. Beyond the already mentioned device families, the patch should also be coming to the Galaxy Z Fold5, Z Flip5, Z Fold4, Z Flip4, A54 and Note20 in this same wave. It is interesting to note that not FE edition devices seem to currently be in this wave.
