Google has released the September 2016 Android Security Bulletin. Partners have had access to the warnings in this month’s bulletin since August 5, 2016 or earlier.
Google is enhancing the split patch format for September, which means there are three patch dates that could arrive on your phone this month.
The September 1, 2016 patches for a pair of Critical remote code execution vulnerabilities, many serious Elevation of Privilege vulnerabilities, several Information Disclosure vulnerabilities, and a pair of Denial of Service vulnerabilities all within Android itself.
The September 5, 2016 patch contains everything in the September 1 patch, as well as patches for several kernel related Elevation of Privilege vulnerabilities, many Qualcomm driver-related vulnerabilities, and Elevation of privilege vulnerabilities found in other third-party drivers.
The September 6, 2016 patch contains everything in the September 1 and September 5 patches, as well as a fix for a Critical Elevation of Privilege vulnerability in the kernel shared memory subsystem and a fix for a vulnerability in a Qualcomm networking component.
The most severe of these issues is a Critical security vulnerability that could enable remote code execution on an affected device through multiple methods such as email, web browsing, and MMS when processing media files.
Alongside the bulletin, Google have released a security update to Nexus devices through an over-the-air (OTA) update. The Nexus firmware images have also been released to the Google Developer site. Source code patches for these issues will be released to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) repository in the next 48 hours.
The tables below contains a list of security vulnerabilities, the Common Vulnerability and Exposures ID (CVE), the assessed severity, and whether or not Nexus devices are affected. The severity assessment is based on the effect that exploiting the vulnerability would possibly have on an affected device, assuming the platform and service mitigations are disabled for development purposes or if successfully bypassed.
Security patch levels of 2016-09-01 or later must address the following issues.
| Issue | CVE | Severity | Affects Nexus? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Remote code execution vulnerability in LibUtils | CVE-2016-3861 | Critical | Yes |
| Remote code execution vulnerability in Mediaserver | CVE-2016-3862 | Critical | Yes |
| Remote code execution vulnerability in MediaMuxer | CVE-2016-3863 | High | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Mediaserver | CVE-2016-3870, CVE-2016-3871, CVE-2016-3872 | High | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in device boot | CVE-2016-3875 | High | No* |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Settings | CVE-2016-3876 | High | Yes |
| Denial of service vulnerability in Mediaserver | CVE-2016-3899, CVE-2016-3878, CVE-2016-3879, CVE-2016-3880, CVE-2016-3881 | High | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Telephony | CVE-2016-3883 | Moderate | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Notification Manager Service | CVE-2016-3884 | Moderate | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Debuggerd | CVE-2016-3885 | Moderate | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in System UI Tuner | CVE-2016-3886 | Moderate | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Settings | CVE-2016-3887 | Moderate | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in SMS | CVE-2016-3888 | Moderate | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Settings | CVE-2016-3889 | Moderate | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Java Debug Wire Protocol | CVE-2016-3890 | Moderate | No* |
| Information disclosure vulnerability in Mediaserver | CVE-2016-3895 | Moderate | Yes |
| Information disclosure vulnerability in AOSP Mail | CVE-2016-3896 | Moderate | No* |
| Information disclosure vulnerability in Wi-Fi | CVE-2016-3897 | Moderate | No* |
| Denial of service vulnerability in Telephony | CVE-2016-3898 | Moderate | Yes |
Security patch levels of 2016-09-05 or later must address all of the 2016-09-01 issues as well as the following issues.
| Issue | CVE | Severity | Affects Nexus? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in kernel security subsystem | CVE-2014-9529, CVE-2016-4470 | Critical | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in kernel networking subsystem | CVE-2013-7446 | Critical | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in kernel netfilter subsystem | CVE-2016-3134 | Critical | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in kernel USB driver | CVE-2016-3951 | Critical | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in kernel sound subsystem | CVE-2014-4655 | High | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in kernel ASN.1 decoder | CVE-2016-2053 | High | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Qualcomm radio interface layer | CVE-2016-3864 | High | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Qualcomm subsystem driver | CVE-2016-3858 | High | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in kernel networking driver | CVE-2016-4805 | High | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Synaptics touchscreen driver | CVE-2016-3865 | High | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Qualcomm camera driver | CVE-2016-3859 | High | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Qualcomm sound driver | CVE-2016-3866 | High | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Qualcomm IPA driver | CVE-2016-3867 | High | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Qualcomm power driver | CVE-2016-3868 | High | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Broadcom Wi-Fi driver | CVE-2016-3869 | High | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in kernel eCryptfs filesystem | CVE-2016-1583 | High | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in NVIDIA kernel | CVE-2016-3873 | High | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Qualcomm Wi-Fi driver | CVE-2016-3874 | High | Yes |
| Denial of service vulnerability in kernel networking subsystem | CVE-2015-1465, CVE-2015-5364 | High | Yes |
| Denial of service vulnerability in kernel ext4 file system | CVE-2015-8839 | High | Yes |
| Information disclosure vulnerability in Qualcomm SPMI driver | CVE-2016-3892 | Moderate | Yes |
| Information disclosure vulnerability in Qualcomm sound codec | CVE-2016-3893 | Moderate | Yes |
| Information disclosure vulnerability in Qualcomm DMA component | CVE-2016-3894 | Moderate | Yes |
| Information disclosure vulnerability in kernel networking subsystem | CVE-2016-4998 | Moderate | Yes |
| Denial of service vulnerability in kernel networking subsystem | CVE-2015-2922 | Moderate | Yes |
| Vulnerabilities in Qualcomm components | CVE-2016-2469 | High | No |
Security patch levels of 2016-09-06 or later must address all of the 2016-09-05 issues and 2016-09-01 issues, as well as the following issues.
| Issue | CVE | Severity | Affects Nexus? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in kernel shared memory subsystem | CVE-2016-5340 | Critical | Yes |
| Elevation of privilege vulnerability in Qualcomm networking component | CVE-2016-2059 | High | Yes |
Android and Google Service Mitigations
This is a summary of the mitigations provided by the Android security platform and service protections such as SafetyNet. These capabilities reduce the likelihood that security vulnerabilities could be successfully exploited on Android.
- Exploitation for many issues on Android is made more difficult by enhancements in newer versions of the Android platform. We encourage all users to update to the latest version of Android where possible.
- The Android Security team actively monitors for abuse with Verify Apps and SafetyNet, which are designed to warn users about Potentially Harmful Applications. Verify Apps is enabled by default on devices with Google Mobile Services, and is especially important for users who install applications from outside of Google Play. Device rooting tools are prohibited within Google Play, but Verify Apps warns users when they attempt to install a detected rooting applicationâ€â€no matter where it comes from. Additionally, Verify Apps attempts to identify and block installation of known malicious applications that exploit a privilege escalation vulnerability. If such an application has already been installed, Verify Apps will notify the user and attempt to remove the detected application.
- As appropriate, Google Hangouts and Messenger applications do not automatically pass media to processes such as Mediaserver.
Full details of the September 2016 Android Security Bulletin is available here.
