Samsung has developed a new security system called #SamsungMessageGuard to help Galaxy smartphone users keep safe from “zero-click” exploits that use malicious image files. Samsung Message Guard is an “advanced sandbox” which isolates certain types of files when they arrive on the device. It uses virtualization techniques that “checks the file bit by bit and processes it in a controlled environment” so that it can’t exploit vulnerabilities to infect the Samsung Galaxy device. Threat actors have a wide range of tools in their arsenal. Besides common attack forms, which include phishing and malware distribution via email attachments, advanced attacks exist. Zero-click exploits, also known as zero-click attacks, are designed to run automatically, without any user interaction; this makes them particularly dangerous as inexperienced and experienced users may fall victim to these attacks. Images and other file types may be prepared specifically to contain malicious code. If a vulnerability is found, specially prepared files may be used to execute malware on a user’s device as soon as it is displayed as a preview in chat applications or otherwise viewed on a user’s device. Most operating systems are protected by security services and applications. While these provide good protection against known threats, most zero-click exploits use zero-day vulnerabilities that are not patched at the time of discovery. Samsung notes that protections against audio and video format attacks are already available on Samsung devices. The new Message Guard protection extends protections to certain image formats that are commonly used. The security feature adds protection against zero-click attacks that use the image formats PNG, JPG/JPEG, GIF, ICO, WEBP, BMP, WBMP. For now, Samsung Message Guard is limited to protecting these kind of attacks in Samsung Messages and Messages by Google only at the time of launch. Samsung announced that it plans to expand protection “across third-party messaging apps” in the future.