0-Day Deserialization flaw impacts more than 55 percent Android users

Security Experts at IBM have discovered a new critical vulnerability affecting Android OS and impacting more than 55 percent users.

There is no peace for the Android users, recently experts discovered the critical Stagefright vulnerability and other serious flaws like the Certifi-gate vulnerability and CVE-2015-3823 flaw.

Now experts from IBM have discovered another critical bug in the Google Android OS that impacts more than 55 percent of all the mobile devices.

The researchers explained that the new bug, coded as CVE-2015-3825, is a privilege escalation vulnerability in the Android platform that could be exploited to allow “a malicious app with no privileges, the ability to become a ‘super app’ and help the cybercriminals own the device.”

The flaw, dubbed Android serialization vulnerability, affects Android versions 4.3 and above, including the latest release Android M.

The vulnerability resides in the Android OS component called OpenSSLX509Certificate, the attackers can exploit it to compromise the system_server process and gain powerful system-level access to the mobile device.

The researchers published a video proof-of-concept for the exploitation of the flaw, in the video the attacker exploits the flaw using a malicious app by replacing the legitimate Facebook app to steal victim’s credentials.

When the victim runs the app, it downloads additional code to replace the existing app with a malicious code, including an exploit used to escalate permissions using the vulnerability.

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Security experts from IBM also discovered other vulnerabilities in a series of third-party Android Software Development Kits (SDKs) that could allow attackers to execute remote arbitrary code from the apps that use these SDKs.

The IBM has already reported the flaws to Google, more information is available in a detailed analysis presented in a paper published by the researchers.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Deserialization flaw, macros)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.