Warning to millions of smartphone owners to switch off this setting immediately amid serious security flaws

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

Smartphone users are being warned after a number of popular models appear to have been hit by a number of serious security flaws that could allow hackers to attack devices remotely.

The models at risk include Samsung and Google devices. The worrying flaw has been discovered by Google's security team at Project Zero and it's not a threat that should be ignored.

Cybercriminals only need the victim's mobile number to compromise the phone without the user knowing anything is wrong. As Project Zero's Tim Willis explains: "Tests conducted by Project Zero confirm that those four vulnerabilities allow an attacker to remotely compromise a phone at the baseband level with no user interaction, and require only that the attacker knows the victim's phone number.

With limited additional research and development, we believe that skilled attackers would be able to quickly create an operational exploit to compromise affected devices silently and remotely." READ MORE: Investigation launched as body found in recycling bin Samsung has been made aware of the bug and is working on a fix as it takes customer safety seriously.