Critical Vulnerabilities Patched in Android Mediaserver, Qualcomm Drivers

Google on Monday released the June 2016 set of security updates for the Android operating system, meant to patch a total of 40 vulnerabilities in the platform: 8 Critical, 28 High, and 4 Medium severity.

For roughly a year, after the Stagefright vulnerability was disclosed in July 2015, Google has been fixing issues in the mediaserver component, and this month’s security bulletin is no different. A total of 15 security vulnerabilities were resolved in mediaserver this month, along with 16 flaws in various Qualcomm drivers, and 9 bugs in other components and drivers.

The June 2016 Android security updates resolve a Remote Code Execution (RCE) flaw in mediaserver (CVE-2016-2463) rated Critical, 13 High severity flaws in the component – 12 Elevation of Privilege (EoP) issues (CVE-2016-2476, CVE-2016-2477, CVE-2016-2478, CVE-2016-2479, CVE-2016-2480, CVE-2016-2481, CVE-2016-2482, CVE-2016-2483, CVE-2016-2484, CVE-2016-2485, CVE-2016-2486, CVE-2016-2487) and a Remote Denial of Service (DoS) bug (CVE-2016-2495) –, and an Information Disclosure vulnerability (CVE-2016-2499) rated Medium risk.

Last month, Google patched 40 vulnerabilities in Android, 12 of which were rated Critical. One of these was an Elevation of Privilege (EoP) vulnerability in the Qualcomm Secure Execution Environment (QSEE), which was found to affect about 60 percent of all Android devices around the world, and it’s no surprise that this month’s patches focus on Qualcomm drivers.

The June 2016 Android security update closes 6 Critical severity EoP flaws affecting Qualcomm Video (CVE-2016-2465), Sound (CVE-2016-2466, CVE-2016-2467), GPU (CVE-2016-2468, CVE-2016-2062), and Wi-Fi (CVE-2016-2474) drivers, Google’s security bulletin reveals.

Other 9 EoP flaws in Qualcomm drivers – Sound (CVE-2016-2066, CVE-2016-2469), Camera (CVE-2016-2061, CVE-2016-2488), Video (CVE-2016-2489), and Wi-Fi (CVE-2016-2470, CVE-2016-2471, CVE-2016-2472, CVE-2016-2473) – were also addressed, all rated High severity, along with a Medium risk Information Disclosure flaw in Qualcomm Wi-Fi Driver (CVE-2016-2498).

Google also fixed a Critical RCE flaw in libwebm (CVE-2016-2464), two High risk EoPs in Broadcom Wi-Fi Driver (CVE-2016-2475, CVE-2016-2493), two other in NVIDIA Camera Driver (CVE-2016-2490, CVE-2016-2491), one in MediaTek Power Management Driver (CVE-2016-2492), and another in SD Card Emulation Layer (CVE-2016-2494). The remaining newly patched flaws were an EoP in Framework UI (CVE-2016-2496) and an Information Disclosure in Activity Manager (CVE-2016-2500), both rated Medium risk.

Android 4.4.4, 5.0.2, 5.1.1, 6.0, and 6.0.1 are affected by most of these vulnerabilities, though Google also explains that some of these issues impact only Nexus devices (namely those affecting Qualcomm, Broadcom, and NVIDIA drivers), while others affect only the 6.0 and 6.1 versions of Android (the Framework UI vulnerability).

Devices running under Android with Security Patch Levels of June 01, 2016 or later are safe from these vulnerabilities. Google also explains that its partners were notified on these issues on May 02, 2016 or earlier, and that source code patches will be released to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) repository shortly.

Related: Google Issues Emergency Patch For Critical Android Rooting Exploit

Related: Google Patches Criti
cal Vulnerabilities in Android