Rooting your Galaxy S5 is super simple with CF-Auto-Root. Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Android

Rooting your Samsung Galaxy S5 (and S5 Prime) or Galaxy Note 4 couldn’t be easier, thanks to Chainfire’s wonderfully simple root method, “CF-Auto-Root.” The tool provides users with the SuperSU binary and APK for root access under their pre-installed TouchWiz ROM.

Less than 24 hours after the Android L developer preview images were released by Google, SuperSU developer Chainfire has managed to gain root access on it.

While Chainfire was previously worried that the next version of Android might effectively kill root, his findings have turned out to be wrong since the process pretty much remains the same with only a minor modification required to SuperSU. 

The Samsung Galaxy S5 isn’t officially available for another two weeks, but a lucky few have gotten their hands on it already. One of those people is recognized developer Chainfire, who has already developed a root for the international (SM-G900F) version of the device.

When you flash a custom ROM to your Samsung smartphone, a flash counter is triggered that lets Samsung know you’ve tampered with it, and how many ROMs have been installed; it helps the company determine whether or not it should honor your warranty if you have issues with your device.

Fortunately for us, we’ve always been able to reset those counters to hide out tweaking secret — but that’s not the case with the new Galaxy Note 3.

Developers have discovered a serious vulnerability with Samsung’s Exynos-powered smartphones — including its latest Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II devices — that can provide attackers with access to all physical memory. The flaw leaves the handsets open to malicious apps that can access a user’s personal data, completely wipe their data, or worse, brick their handset.