Google’s October 2019 set of security patches for Android address a total of 26 vulnerabilities in the operating system, including a couple of remote code execution bugs impacting Android 10.
The most important of these vulnerabilities are three remote code execution flaws in the Media framework (CVE-2019-2184, CVE-2019-2185, and CVE-2019-2186), all three rated Critical on Android 7.1.1, 7.1.2, 8.0, 8.1, and 9.
“The most severe of these issues is a critical security vulnerability in the Media framework component that could enable a remote attacker using a specially crafted file to execute arbitrary code within the context of a privileged process,” Google explains.
CVE-2019-2185 and CVE-2019-2186 also impact the latest platform iteration, Android 10. However, their impact is mitigated due to safety improvements in the operating system, and they are considered only Medium risk on this version.
All three issues are addressed on devices running 2019-10-01 security patch level, which also includes patches for High severity vulnerabilities in Framework (elevation of privilege), Media framework (information disclosure), and System (elevation of privilege and information disclosure).
The second part of this month’s updates is delivered via the 2019-10-05 security patch level, which includes fixes for a High severity bug in the Kernel component, three High risk issues in Qualcomm components, and 8 Critical and 7 High severity vulnerabilities in Qualcomm closed-source components.
In addition to these security updates, Google released a separate set of patches for Pixel devices, to address vulnerabilities specific to them.
The Internet giant also notes that Pixel 1 and Pixel 2 phones will receive a fix for CVE-2019-2215 as part of the October update (Pixel 3 and Pixel 3a are not vulnerable). The vulnerability is an elevation of privilege that has already been exploited in attacks.
The update also includes a fix for a High risk information disclosure in Framework (CVE-2019-2183), and two patches for Moderate severity flaws in Qualcomm components (CVE-2019-2297 and CVE-2019-10566).
Additionally, Google included a series of functional patches in this month’s update for Pixel devices, to improve Wi-Fi connectivity, fix missing notifications in Pixel Stand mode, improve sensor calibration and system stability, and fix and improve various user interface issues.
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