Android Zero Day Vulnerability

Google has disclosed that a now-patched vulnerability affecting Android devices that use Qualcomm chipsets is being weaponized by attackers to launch targeted attacks.

Tracked as CVE-2020-11261 (CVSS score 8.4), the flaw concerns an “improper input validation” issue in Qualcomm’s Graphics component that could be exploited to trigger memory corruption when an attacker-engineered app requests access to a huge chunk of the device’s memory.

CVE-2020-11261 was discovered and reported to Qualcomm by Google’s Android Security team on July 20, 2020, after which it was fixed in January 2021.

It’s worth noting that the access vector for the vulnerability is “local,” meaning that exploitation requires local access to the device. In other words, to launch a successful attack, the bad actor must either have physical access to the vulnerable smartphone or use other means – e.g., a watering hole – to deliver malicious code and set off the attack chain.

While specifics about the attacks, the identity of the attacker, and the targeted victims have not been released, it is not unusual for Google to withhold sharing such information to prevent other threat actors from taking advantage of the vulnerability.

Patch need to be updated on regular basis to avoid these vulnerability infusion.