The other day some unfortunate news broke that the Samsung Exynos powered phones were vulnerable to a major security exploit. The exploit would give some potentially malicious apps access to your entire phone. So it would be possible that your entire phone could be wiped by bad apps. Here’s Samsung’s official statement on the issue:
Samsung is aware of the potential security issue related to the Exynos processor and plans to provide a software update to address it as quickly as possible. The issue may arise only when a malicious application is operated on the affected devices; however, this does not affect most devices operating credible and authenticated applications. Samsung will continue to closely monitor the situation until the software fix has been made available to all affected mobile devices.
Great to see that Samsung is so proactive in this issue. There’s no time frame as to when this fix will roll out but I imagine we’ll see it very soon (hopefully with some other little updates to the firmware as well!). Again, the best advice I can give you is to be careful of what you download. Check the reviews!