Android’s February 2020 Update Patches Critical System Vulnerabilities

Google this week released the February 2020 set of security updates for the Android operating system, which address a total of 25 vulnerabilities, including 2 rated critical severity.

Both of these critical flaws were found in Android’s System component and both are patched on all devices running the 2020-02-01 security patch level.

Tracked as CVE-2020-0022, the first of these bugs is a remote code execution vulnerability that is considered critical only on Android 8.0, 8.1, and 9 devices. On Android 10, it can only lead to a denial-of-service condition, being considered moderate severity.

Impacting Android 10 only, the second critical flaw is tracked as CVE-2020-0023 and can lead to information disclosure.

“The most severe of these issues is a critical security vulnerability in the System component that could enable a remote attacker using a specially crafted transmission to execute arbitrary code within the context of a privileged process,” Google explains.

Four other vulnerabilities were patched in System this month, all four rated high severity. Three of them (CVE-2020-0005, CVE-2020-0026, and CVE-2020-0027) are elevation of privilege bugs impacting Android 8.0, 8.1, 9, and 10, while the fourth (CVE-2020-0028) is an information disclosure issue affecting Android 9.

Seven other flaws were fixed with the 2020-02-01 security patch level, all of them in the Framework component. The most severe of them could allow “a local malicious application to bypass user interaction requirements in order to gain access to additional permissions,” Google explains in an advisory.

These include three elevation of privilege flaws (CVE-2020-0014, CVE-2020-0015, and CVE-2019-2200), three information disclosure issues (CVE-2020-0017, CVE-2020-0018, and CVE-2020-0020), and one DoS bug (CVE-2020-0021).

Twelve other vulnerabilities were addressed in Android this month, on all devices running 2020-02-05 security patch level. Two of them impact Kernel components, six affect Qualcomm components, and four others were fixed in Qualcomm closed-source components.

In addition to the issues addressed with the February 2020 Android security updates, Google this month released patches for four other vulnerabilities affecting supported Pixel devices.

Google says all four of these were found in Qualcomm components: video (CVE-2019-10572 and CVE-2019-10614), camera (CVE-2019-14088), and Kernel (CVE-2019-2301).

“All supported Google devices will receive an update to the 2020-02-05 patch level. We encourage all customers to accept these updates to their devices,” the Internet giant says.

Related: Android’s January 2020 Update Patches 40 Vulnerabilities

Related: Google Patches Critical DoS Flaw in Android 10

Related: Google Patches Critical Flaws in Android’s System Component