The company requests the concerned users to contact them directly.
Users report that a bug present in several models of Samsung smartphones makes their photos being sent by message to their stored contacts.
The problem is affecting the most recent models, including the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and the Galaxy S9, and the problem seems to find its origin in Samsung Messages, its default text messaging application.
Some users have reported that individual images, or even their entire galleries, have been mistakenly sent to random contacts via Samsung Messages app. The company is already aware of the problem and said to be conducting pentest and investigating reports, which have appeared on Reddit and on the official Samsung customer forums.
“Samsung has evaluated the issue thoroughly in recent days; however, pentest have not found any hardware or software problems that are relevant to this particular case”, the firm said in a statement. “We are aware of the reports and our technical teams are studying it. We invite interested customers to contact us directly”.
In his Reddit account, the user Rubsumlotion claimed that his Samsung Galaxy S9+ sent his “full photo gallery” to his girlfriend. Since then, other users have reported similar problems, but no cause has been found.
Other users reported receiving an update for the Samsung Messages app, based on Rich Communications Services (RCS), technology that is slowly being introduced worldwide.
According to pentest experts from the International Institute of Cyber Security, the RCS is the technology designed to replace SMS as the modern standard for text messaging and is programmed to improve multimedia content delivery.
For the moment, users are encouraged to switch to a different messaging app or disable access to the phone’s storage in the Samsung Messages app to prevent files from being sent.
Working as a cyber security solutions architect, Alisa focuses on application and network security. Before joining us she held a cyber security researcher positions within a variety of cyber security start-ups. She also experience in different industry domains like finance, healthcare and consumer products.
