Samsung Releases SMR For July: Monthly Report & Analysis

Samsung earlier this year committed to a Software Distribution 4-year Policy by offering up to four generations of One UI and Android OS upgrades on select Galaxy devices. Today, we will tell you about a part of this policy that is crucial to monthly, biannual, quarterly & annual updates.

AKA Samsung Patches:

SMR is a maintenance release for major flagship models as part of the monthly Security Maintenance Release (SMR) process. This includes patches from Google and Samsung, mostly for security and privacy purposes.

Along with Google patches, Samsung Mobile also releases Samsung Vulnerabilities and Exposures (SVE).

A list is known as the Samsung security index (SSI), included in “Security software version,” SMR Jul-2022 Release 1, and contains all patches from Samsung and Google.

• Some of the SVE items may not be included in this package which is that some of these items could be already included in a previous maintenance release.
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• They are identified & fixed as Critical, High & Moderate level SVEs.
• Some SVEs are not disclosed by Samsung Security Update all the time.

However, in some cases, frequent operating system upgrades may cause delays in scheduled security updates, but operating system upgrades will include security patches and updated frameworks when distributed. 

Delivery times for security patches may vary by region and model. 

Some fixes received from chipset vendors (also known as device-specific fixes) may not be included in the monthly security update package and

will be bundled along with security update packages when prepared.

These threats & vulnerabilities are researched by both the OS & UI teams, with the addition of freelance researchers providing feedback.

For further technical details, visit the links provided.