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Galaxy S23 series amps up mobile security with Samsung Message Guard

Samsung

Published: Feb 16, 2023, 3:00 PM

Peter Kostadinov

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Samsung announced Message Guard for Galaxy S23 series

Samsung has been on a roll lately, bringing the latest One UI 5.1 software update as well as the nifty charging bypass gaming feature to a large host of Galaxy phones, but isn't ready to call it quits with the software news for February 2023. What a way to complement the launch of the Galaxy S23 Ultra, Galaxy S23 Plus, and Galaxy S23, definitely among the best Samsung phones available right now!

Samsung has just announced a new pre-emptive security feature already available on the Galaxy S23 series, dubbed Samsung Message Guard, which aims to prevent zero-day attacks carried by images sent to the phone. The company reveals that no data about such attacks on Galaxy phones has been gathered so far, but the feature is getting released anyway with the hopes of further boosting the security of the vast Galaxy portfolio.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra starts at $199.99 with trade-in

The S23 Ultra is now officially in stores. Get up to $750 instant trade-in credit, and $100 instant credit from Samsung with the purchase. The phone starts at $199.99 with an eligible trade-in for AT&T or T-Mobile.

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Galaxy S23 Plus starts at $119.99

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Galaxy S23 for free with trade-in (AT&T and T-Mobile), save on unlocked model too

Go with T-Mobile or AT&T right off the bat and you can pay nothing for a vanilla S23 with 256GB storage (with an eligible trade-in). Verizon's version starts at $59.99 with trade-in. Or pick an unlocked model and cough up $159.99 after trade-in credits.

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According to Samsung, the malicious agent might lace an image up with a specific zero-click exploit that gives them full control over your phone, including your messages, gallery contents, and in the worst case scenario, the login credentials for your banking app. We reiterate: all of these are very real threats that could supposedly happen to Galaxy phones, but Samsung hasn't received any reports of such cyber-crime occurrences, and hopefully, it never will.

What exactly is Samsung Message Guard?

Simply said, it's a sand-boxed environment that contains the received image and checks it for known malicious code that potentially harm your data. This way, any potential hazard residing well-hidden into the bits and bytes that make up an image, is essentially neutralized in this virtual quarantine. No user input is required, so rest assured that if you stumble upon such a harmful file, your phone will be capable of fending for itself.

Initially, Samsung Message Guard will work with Samsung Messages and Messages by Google, but Samsung will be updating the security app to work with other third-party messaging services in the near future as well. No details are provided about these, but we imagine that services like Facebook Messenger, Viber, WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, and Signal would most certainly fall under Samsung Message Guard's protection.

The Samsung Message Guard feature will be gradually released to other Galaxy phones running One UI 5.1 or higher in the coming months.