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 and stability improvements, but it also includes bug fixes and security updates that fix various vulnerabilities. It is difficult to quantify how many vulnerabilities exist, aside from occasional significant vulnerabilities, if and when the media reports on them. Thanks to security researchers at Oversecured and Samsung, you can get a better idea of how often security issues are fixed.
The Oversecured research team (via GitHub) discovered more than 170 serious vulnerabilities on Samsung devices, primarily in its pre-installed mobile apps. They shared their findings with Samsung and the company reportedly fixed all the issues over the past few years. Samsung announced the patches and included details on related CVEs, common vulnerabilities and exposures, and their tracking IDs so they can be easily referenced. In other words, you can track and see which issues Samsung fixed and when.
Samsung’s August update alone fixed around 56 potential vulnerabilities. From January 2026 to August 2026, during critical, high and moderate events, more than 260 security vulnerabilities were fixed. If that’s not an argument for updating your device(s) ASAP, what is?
What do these security patches actually prevent?
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The total number of flaws puts software security into perspective a little better, especially considering that many Samsung phones will no longer receive updates in 2026. It’s not safe to continue using them beyond their support dates, mainly because they won’t receive the security patches that Samsung has abandoned. The nearly 170 flaws discovered by the Oversecured team affected multiple system functions and applications, including bugs that could allow unauthorized people to access the device’s camera and microphone, hijack network traffic, and even engage in complete takeovers of Samsung accounts with remote access.
In September 2025, Samsung released an emergency update for Galaxy users due to serious risk. A similar zero-day exploit has been discovered – identified as CVE-2025-21042 – that would allow attackers to overwrite memory and execute unauthorized code; The issue was fixed in an update. Of course, aside from the aforementioned flaws, Samsung also regularly fixes issues discovered and disclosed by Google as part of the Android Security Bulletin. Many devices running Android are also receiving these security updates.
Ultimately, the patches fix some pretty annoying vulnerabilities. This is also the reason why one of the things you should never do on your Samsung phone is disable the built-in security features. They help protect your device from potential malware infections and provide other protections. Along with system software updates, you stay well protected.
