QuadRooter: New Android Vulnerabilities in Over 900 Million Devices

[Becky]

Serious software vulnerabilities have been discovered in smart phones which use certain chipsets made by Qualcomm. These processors are found in over 900 million devices worldwide, and the vulnerability could give attackers complete access to a phone's data. The problems were identified by Check Point, and here's a snippet of their article:

Check Point today disclosed details about a set of four vulnerabilities affecting 900 million Android smartphones and tablets that use Qualcomm® chipsets. The Check Point mobile threat research team, which calls the set of vulnerabilities QuadRooter, presented its findings in a session at DEF CON 24 in Las Vegas.

What is QuadRooter?
QuadRooter is a set of four vulnerabilities affecting Android devices built using Qualcomm chipsets. Qualcomm is the world’s leading designer of LTE chipsets with a 65% share of the LTE modem baseband market. If any one of the four vulnerabilities is exploited, an attacker can trigger privilege escalations for the purpose of gaining root access to a device.

Some of the affected phones include Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge; Google Nexus 5X, 6 and 6P; LG G4 and G5, plus many others.

The flaw is expected to be resolved with a software patch, but there is no saying how long this may take.

Read the full post at Check Point

 

[V_R]

The advantage of a Nexus device, I'll have the patch within a month. Sad to say that other manufacturers might not be as fast...

 

[V_R]

Seems the August Android security patches contain the fix for this. So providing your device manufacturer releases the monthly pataches (like they should) it should be patched fairly soon.


On the filp side Samsung use the Exenos chip over here so it shouldn't affect UK Samsung owners. They only use Qualcomm's Snapdragon SOC in the US.

 

[Becky]

On the filp side Samsung use the Exenos chip over here so it shouldn't affect UK Samsung owners. They only use Qualcomm's Snapdragon SOC in the US.

Ah didn't realise that. Excellent

 

[V_R]

Good article dispelling some of the fear regarding this.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3105569/android/android-quadrooter.html

 

[muckshifter]

Good article dispelling some of the fear regarding this.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3105569/android/android-quadrooter.html

... and this is the point everyone should read!