How to disable SIM-killing USSD PUK attack that has spread to all Androids

Samsung has fixed the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) exploit that could remotely wipe data from a Galaxy S III smartphone, but that doesn't mean the USSD threat is over: far from it in fact. According to some security researchers, 400 million Android device users are at risk from having their hardware bricked. It's not just owners of the Samsung Galaxy S III that are vulnerable to this particular attack, or indeed just Samsung handsets at all as first thought. As is often the case, the discovery of a vulnerability leads to several new ways to exploit it and that's what has happened here. According to several IT security researchers, a new USSD attack variant is out there which works on a huge number of smartphones running the Android OS.