GrapheneOS (@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social)
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These patched vulnerabilities and other currently unpatched vulnerabilities are being exploited by forensic tools used by states to target journalists, political opponents, activists, arbitrary people crossing borders, etc. Sure, they target lots of drug users / dealers too...

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/17265164

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/112609239806949074

We questioned why this was only listed in the Pixel Update Bulletin and they agree:

After review we agree with your assessment that this is an Android issue and as such we are working on backports to include this in a future Android Security Bulletin.

April 2024 monthly update for Pixels included a partial mitigation for this vulnerability in firmware (CVE-2024-29748).

Android 14 QPR3 released in June 2024 includes a full solution for all Android devices by implementing the wipe-without-reboot proposal we made in our report.

The issue is that in practice, only Pixels ship the monthly and quarterly updates. Other devices only ship monthly security backports, not the monthly/quarterly releases of AOSP. They were only going to get the patch when they updated to Android 15. They’re now going to backport.

The other vulnerability we reported at the same time for reset attacks was assigned CVE-2024-29745 but that’s a firmware/hardware issue without a software solution available so we can’t get them to include it in the Android Security Bulletin unless we convince Qualcomm to fix it.

Every vulnerability in the Android Open Source Project that’s deemed to be High/Critical severity is meant to be backported to yearly releases from the past 3 years (currently Android 12, 13 and 14). Low/Moderate severity vulnerabilities are NOT generally backported though.

The issue is that they’re really listing patches rather than vulnerabilities. Both of the vulnerabilities we originally reported impact all Android devices, but both got Pixel specific patches in April 2024 and therefore got treated as Pixel specific vulnerabilities instead.

Since the complete solution for the device admin API is an Android Open Source Project (AOSP) patch, they’re going to backport it. Since there’s no way to frame the reset attack issue as an AOSP issue, there isn’t a good way to get it fixed for other devices through this system.

These patched vulnerabilities and other currently unpatched vulnerabilities are being exploited by forensic tools used by states to target journalists, political opponents, activists, arbitrary people crossing borders, etc. Sure, they target lots of drug users / dealers too…