Samsung introduces Message Guard, a zero-click antivirus for messages

Samsung has launched a brand new Message Guard safety function for its Galaxy vary of smartphones and tablets that may higher shield customers in opposition to “zero-click” cyberattacks disguised as picture attachments in messages. Zero-click assaults — which set up adware and different malicious code onto gadgets with none interplay from the proprietor — have grow to be more and more frequent over the previous few years. 

One of the crucial notable examples of zero-click assaults was discovered by Citizen Lab in 2020, after a recognized iOS / iMessage zero-click safety flaw was exploited to put in NSO’s Pegasus adware onto the telephones of journalists, politicians, and activists between 2017 and 2020.

Zero-click assaults usually go away little hint and victims could also be utterly unaware that their gadget has been compromised. In some {cases}, safety measures like end-to-end encrypted messaging meant to guard customers can truly make zero-click assaults even harder to detect as the info being despatched can solely be seen by the sender and receiver.

Samsung claims its new Message Guard function can assist stop these assaults earlier than they happen, routinely quarantining and neutralizing potential threats hid inside PNG, JPG/JPEG, GIF, ICO, WEBP, BMP, and WBMP format picture recordsdata earlier than they will trigger any hurt. When a Galaxy gadget receives a textual content message with a picture attachment, Message Guard isolates the picture file from the remainder of your gadget to lock down any probably malicious code. The function then scans the picture earlier than processing it to make sure it could possibly’t infect the gadget.

Samsung Message Guard is on the market now on Galaxy S23 series telephones (available for purchase from today, February 17th) and can ultimately be rolled out to different Galaxy smartphones and tablets working One UI 5.1 or greater sooner or later later this yr. The Message Guard function at the moment works on Samsung Messages and Messages by Google, and can ultimately be made obtainable to undisclosed third-party messaging apps through a software program replace “at a later date.” Message Guard doesn’t should be activated by the consumer and runs “silently and largely invisibly within the background,” in line with Samsung.