Samsung supports Apple… kind of. Photo: Kārlis Dambrāns/Flickr CC

Chiming in on one of the biggest tech stories of the year, Samsung says that customer privacy is “extremely important to it” and argues against software backdoors — but won’t totally commit to supporting Apple, either.

Don’t tap untrusted links in SMS messages. Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Android

A new Android malware dubbed “Mazar,” which is being spread by SMS, is capable of wiping all of your personal data, making calls, and reading your text messages.

Detected by a Danish security firm, the malware is thought to have been distributed to more than 100,000 phones in Denmark alone so far.

Google pays out cold cash to security researchers who hack its systems, then report the problems. Photo: tookapic/Pixabay CC

Google paid out more than $2 million in bounties to security researchers last year in an effort to keep its applications and services safe from hackers.

The payments came via the company’s Vulnerability Reward Program, which gives researchers a financial incentive to locate security holes in Google’s software, then report them to the company rather than exploit them.

Update your One A9 today. Photo: HTC

Listen up, HTC One A9 owners! If you have an unlocked device, you’re about to get an over-the-air software update that brings Android’s latest security patch and some welcome bug fixes.

Google is already squashing the latest Linux/Android bug to be discovered. Image: Mazeo/OpenClipArt.org

Since early 2013, a raft of Linux servers, machines running embedded Linux, and even some Android devices have been open to an attack that could allow an unprivileged user or application to execute code as a root user, according to a new report.

Security researchers at Perception Point have outed an issue that was originally introduced when Linux kernel version number 3.8 was released almost three full years ago. It has yet to be patched.