Samsung Owners, Don't Skip Regular Updates: Over 260 Security Flaws Were Fixed This Year

When it comes to general phone maintenance and security, installing the latest system update is always a must. Not only does it bring new features, performance enhancements, and stability, but it also includes bug fixes and security updates that patch various vulnerabilities. It's hard to quantify just how many vulnerabilities there are, outside of the occasional large vulnerability, if and when the media covered them. Thanks to security researchers from Oversecured and Samsung, you can get a better idea of just how often security issues are fixed.

The Oversecured research team (via GitHub) found over 170 serious vulnerabilities on Samsung devices, primarily in its preinstalled mobile apps. They shared their findings with Samsung, and the company has purportedly fixed all the issues over the last few years. Samsung announced the fixes and included details about the related CVEs, common vulnerabilities and exposures, alongside their tracking IDs so they can easily be referenced. In other words, you can follow along and see which problems Samsung has fixed and when.

Samsung's August update alone patched around 56 potential vulnerabilities. From January 2026 to August 2026, across critical, high, and moderate events, there were over 260 security flaws fixed. If that's not an argument for updating your device(s) as soon as possible, what is?

The total number of flaws puts software security into perspective a little better, especially when you consider there are many Samsung phones that will stop getting updates in 2026. It's not safe to continue using them past their support dates, mostly because they won't be getting those security fixes that Samsung has been dropping. The nearly 170 flaws that the Oversecured team found spanned several system functions and apps, including bugs that could grant unauthorized parties access to the device camera and microphone, hijack network traffic, and even engage in full Samsung account takeovers with remote access.

In September 2025, Samsung issued an emergency update for Galaxy users due to a severe risk. A similar zero-day exploit was discovered — tracked as CVE-2025-21042 — that would allow attackers to overwrite memory and execute unauthorized code; the problem was fixed in an update. Of course, outside of the aforementioned flaws, Samsung also regularly patches issues discovered and disclosed by Google as part of the Android security bulletin — many devices powered by Android get these security updates too.

Ultimately, the fixes patch up some pretty gnarly vulnerabilities. This is also why one of the things you should never do on your Samsung phone is disable built-in security features. They help protect your device from potential malware infections and deploy other safeguards. Alongside the system software updates, you remain well protected.