The December 2021 security updates for Android have started rolling out to users with patches for 46 vulnerabilities, including several considered critical severity.
The most severe of the addressed issues is an information leakage bug in the Media framework “that could lead to remote information disclosure with no additional execution privileges needed,” Google explains.
In fact, two information disclosure flaws were addressed in the Media framework component this month (CVE-2021-0967 and CVE-2021-0964), both as part of the 2021-12-01 security patch level.
The same patch level also contains fixes for three vulnerabilities in Framework (two elevation of privilege and one information disclosure, all high severity) and 10 security holes in System (two critical – remote code execution and elevation of privilege – and six high severity).
The second part of Google’s December 2021 Android Security Bulletin includes details on a total of 31 vulnerabilities, most of which affect Qualcomm closed-source components.
Rolling out to devices as the 2021-12-05 security patch level, it fixes one vulnerability in Media framework, three in Kernel components, two in MediaTek components, three in Qualcomm components, and 22 in Qualcomm closed-source components (including three rated critical severity).
Devices running a security patch level of 2021-12-05 or later contain fixes for all of these vulnerabilities, as well as for those addressed with previous patch levels.
For Pixel devices, a patch level of 2021-12-05 addresses 85 additional vulnerabilities that are specific to Google’s phones. Most of these security defects are rated moderate severity, according to Google’s advisory.
These include 19 bugs in Framework, 9 in Media framework, one in Messaging, 29 in System, seven in Kernel components, 19 in Pixel, and one in Qualcomm components.
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