Mobile & Wireless

December 2020 Android Updates Patch 46 Vulnerabilities

A total of 46 vulnerabilities were addressed this week with the release of the December 2020 security updates for Android.

Ionut Arghire

December 9, 2020

A total of 46 vulnerabilities were addressed this week with the release of the December 2020 security updates for Android.

The vulnerability fixes are split into two patch levels, with the first of them addressing 13 bugs, including a critical flaw in Media Framework. All of the remaining 12 issues resolved by the 2020-12-01 security patch level are high severity.

The component affected the most is Framework, with patches for 8 vulnerabilities: three elevation of privilege, four information disclosure, and one denial of service.

The System component saw patches for three information disclosure flaws, while Media Framework for two bugs, namely a critical remote code execution and a high-severity information disclosure bug.

Exploitation of the RCE vulnerability (tracked as CVE-2020-0458 and affecting Android 8.0, 8.1, 9, and 10) can be performed with the help of a specially crafted file, leading to arbitrary code being executed within the context of a privileged process, Google explains.

A total of 33 flaws are patched as part of the 2020-12-05 security patch level. The bugs impact Kernel components, Broadcom components, MediaTek components, Qualcomm components, and Qualcomm closed-source components.

Nine of these flaws feature a severity rating of critical, while the rest are considered high severity.

All of these vulnerabilities, as well as those addressed with previous patch levels, are fixed on devices running a security patch level of 2020-12-05 or later.

In addition to these fixes, Google released a new set of patches for Pixel devices, to address a total of 82 vulnerabilities across five components: Framework (14), Media Framework (17), System (37), Kernel components (8), Qualcomm components (6).

Only one of these flaws has a severity rating of high, while the rest are rated moderate.

Pixel devices running a security patch level of 2020-12-05 or later are protected from all vulnerabilities addressed with the December 2020 and previous security bulletins (both Android and Pixel specific bulletins).

Written By Ionut Arghire

Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.

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