It’s not surprising that the AT&T Samsung Galaxy S7 Active is now receiving a security update from December 2017, when the January patch has already begun rolling out. If anything, this is expected from Samsung, and carrier-locked devices, in fact, even this is an improvement yesteryear when monthly updates were rolled out by AT&T after a delay of 3-4 months.
For those who own the rugged Samsung Galaxy S7 Active, there’s a new update rolling out for your phone. Although the security patch on board is not the latest, it’s what it brings that really matters. Besides fixing errors and bugs discovered in the previous software update as well as improving the general system stability and performance, AT&T is finally rolling out the fix for the Wi-Fi KRACK vulnerability.
This is an exploit that looks to take advantage of your Galaxy S7 Active’s Wi-Fi feature and even though there are no reported cases where it has successfully been exploited, you’ll be better off knowing that your phone is protected from such malicious acts. In case you didn’t know, AT&T already took care of the Blueborne vulnerability in a previous update that brought November’s security patch.
Interestingly, the Blueborne fix was first rolled out to the Galaxy S7 Active with the October 2017 security patch. Since then, the company has rolled out two more updates, both with the same fix as well. The story is not so different when it comes to the KRACK vulnerability, where the device got the first fix with the November 2017 security patch and is getting another one with the December 2017 patch level.
Nevertheless, the firmware comes with build number NRD90M.G891AUCS2BQL6 and being a typical monthly security patch, it weighs just 46.38MB. Apparently, the KRACK Wi-Fi fix will only be applied to S7 Active units installed with the December 1 (or later) patch level, which is actually the version being rolled out at the moment. If yours is older and is yet to receive a fix for the Blueborne issue, you’ll also be taken care of. According to AT&T, your Galaxy S7 Active must be installed with the previous firmware version G891AUCS2BQK4 (November 1, 2017) in order to qualify for this new version.
Of course, this update is still based on Android 7.0 Nougat, but the Galaxy S7 Active will join the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge in receiving the update to Android Oreo right after the Galaxy S8 and S8+ receive the new OS. This should probably happen deep into Q1 or maybe somewhere in Q2 2018.
