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Google Patches Critical Remote Code Execution Vulnerability in Android

Google this week announced the release of patches for 37 vulnerabilities as part of the Android security updates for March 2021, including a fix for a critical flaw in the System component.

Google this week announced the release of patches for 37 vulnerabilities as part of the Android security updates for March 2021, including a fix for a critical flaw in the System component.

Tracked as CVE-2021-0397 and affecting Android 8.1, 9, 10, and 11 releases, the security issue could allow an attacker to execute code remotely on a vulnerable device.

“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.

The bug was addressed as part of the 2021-03-01 security patch level, which also brings patches for nine other issues, including six more in the System component, one affecting Android runtime, and two impacting Framework.

All of these flaws were rated high severity, with their exploitation leading to remote code execution (three bugs), elevation of privilege (five issues), and information disclosure (one vulnerability).

A total of 27 other security holes were addressed as part of the 2021-03-05 security patch level, including one in Kernel components, four in Qualcomm components, and 22 in Qualcomm closed-source components.

The issues were rated high severity, except for five bugs in the Qualcomm closed-source components, which feature a severity rating of critical.

Google’s March 2021 Android Security Bulletin also makes reference to a vulnerability included in Project Mainline components, namely CVE-2021-0390, which affects Wi-Fi.

This week, Google also announced the release of security patches for 43 vulnerabilities affecting Pixel devices. The bugs impact Framework (6), Media framework (5), System (11), Kernel components (19), Qualcomm components (1), and Qualcomm closed-source components (1).

The issues could lead to elevation of privilege, information disclosure, and denial of service. Eight of the bugs were rated high severity, with the remaining 35 considered moderate risk.

Pixel devices running a security patch level of 2021-03-05 or later have fixes for all bugs included in the March 2021 Android Security Bulletin and Pixel Update Bulletin.

Related: Google Patches Over a Dozen High-Severity Privilege Escalation Flaws in Android

Related: Google Releases January 2021 Security Updates for Android

Related: December 2020 Android Updates Patch 46 Vulnerabilities

Written By

Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.

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