Warning issued to millions of smartphone users - 'Switch off this setting immediately'

Cybercriminals will only need a victim’s mobile number to compromised the phone without the user knowing anything is wrong.

Tim Willis from Project Zero said: "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."

Samsung is working on a fix to tackle the bug but until it is pushed out, devices can be attacked at any time.

According to Google, users who want to protect themselves from the new vulnerabilities can turn off Wi-Fi calling and Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) in their device settings.

Turning off the settings will remove the risk of hackers taking over the device.

Wi-Fi calling can be turned off by pressing the phone icon, followed by the menu icon and selecting Settings.

Mobile phone users should then press the indicator next to "WiFi Calling" to turn the function on or off.

Devices from Samsung which are affected include S22, M33, M13, M12, A71, A53, A33, A21, A13, A12 and A04 series.

Models from Vivo includes S16, S15, S6, X70, X60 and X30 series.

Google devices such as the Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 series could be hacked.

While any wearables that use the Exynos W920 chipset or vehicles using the Exynos Auto T5123 chipset are also at risk.