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

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

Probably the most notable examples of zero-click assaults was found by Citizen Lab in 2020, after a identified 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 fully unaware that their gadget has been compromised. In some instances, safety measures like end-to-end encrypted messaging supposed to guard customers can truly make zero-click assaults even harder to detect as the information being despatched can solely be considered by the sender and receiver.

Samsung claims its new Message Guard characteristic will help stop these assaults earlier than they happen, robotically quarantining and neutralizing potential threats hid inside PNG, JPG/JPEG, GIF, ICO, WEBP, BMP, and WBMP format picture information 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 doubtlessly malicious code. The characteristic then scans the picture earlier than processing it to make sure it might’t infect the gadget.

Samsung Message Guard is on the market now on Galaxy S23 sequence telephones (in the stores from at the moment, February seventeenth) and can ultimately be rolled out to different Galaxy smartphones and tablets working One UI 5.1 or larger sooner or later later this yr. The Message Guard characteristic at the moment works on Samsung Messages and Messages by Google, and can ultimately be made out there to undisclosed third-party messaging apps through a software program replace “at a later date.” Message Guard doesn’t have to be activated by the person and runs “silently and largely invisibly within the background,” in keeping with Samsung.