'Stagefright' Flaw: Compromise Android With Just a Text

An anonymous reader writes: Up to 950 million Android phones may be vulnerable to a new exploit involving the Stagefright component of Android, which lets attackers compromise a device through a simple multimedia text — even before the recipient sees it. Researchers from Zimperium zLabs reported the related bugs to Google in April. Google quickly accepted a patch and distributed it to manufacturers, but the researchers say they don't think the manufacturers have yet passed it on to most consumers.

"The weaknesses reside in Stagefright, a media playback tool in Android. They are all "remote code execution" bugs, allowing malicious hackers to infiltrate devices and exfiltrate private data. All attackers would need to send out exploits would be mobile phone numbers, Drake noted. From there, they could send an exploit packaged in a Stagefright multimedia message (MMS), which would let them write code to the device and steal data from sections of the phone that can be reached with Stagefright's permissions. That would allow for recording of audio and video, and snooping on photos stored in SD cards. Bluetooth would also be hackable via Stagefright."

Comments

What benefit to announcing it?

[pz]

This group sounds like they acted reasonably and responsibly, letting Google know there was a problem, and submitting good patches to correct the issue.

If, now, there's some other fundamental impediment to distributing a correction to the bug that does not have to do with Google, but rather with the heaploads of cell phone manufacturers who use Google's code and who may or may not have the ability to distribute the fix, why should the vulnerability be made public? I don't see any apparent upside to the public good.

Re:What benefit to announcing it?

[Bugler412]

Upside would be forcing carriers and OEMS to actually support their product in an ongoing fashion rather than quietly stopping updates shortly after releasing the device, as is the case with many lower end Android devices

Re:What benefit to announcing it?

[macs4all]

Even Apple is not immune to this. Their very expensive disposable shit is not supported forever, and god forbid should an exploit be found then.

NOTHING is supported "Forever". It is simply impractical to do so.

However, if you think the "Support" (or rather, complete lack thereof) that is given to nearly EVERY Android Device has even the SLIGHTEST resemblance to the Support given to iOS devices even several years old (my iPad 2 and iPhone 4s STILL receive OS Updates), you are simply delusional.

Re:What benefit to announcing it?

[macs4all]

But the devices won't last forever, so that's not what is being asked of vendors. Support as long as the hardware can reasonably be expected to last in significant numbers is a much shorter period of time and probably not so much of an ask.

If they don't want to commit for that long, perhaps they should advertise their product as disposable.

Your point being?

Apple has hands-down the best track record of supporting less-than-current-generation mobile hardware. Even Google is dropping support for most of the past generations of NEXUS hardware; something they basically stated they wouldn't do.

And as for all the rest of the Android OEMs: Well, they should simply be ashamed of themselves, period.

value on black market

[edxwelch]

So, remote execution vunerbility on nearly 1 billion devices...
I wonder how much they would have made if they had sold it on the black market, instead of telling Google about it?

Re:Android versions prior to Jelly Bean, version 4

[Karlt1]

The difference is that when Apple patches a security flaw, every semi-current iPhone user worldwide can install the patch and Apple usually patches the current version and one version back. For instance, the "goto fail" security patch that was released in March 2014 patched every phone back to iPhone 3GS in 2009 (patch for 6.x) and IOS 7.