Manufacturers do not intervene against a vulnerability in Android smartphones

Smartphones from Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi and Google with Mali GPU are increasingly at risk of being hacked. However, the manufacturers failed to plug the leak for several months.

The Google Project Zero team warns in blog About a series of security vulnerabilities found in smartphones equipped with the Mali GPU, a graphics processor designed by Arm. As a result, devices from Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi, Pixel, and other Android brands are at increased risk. It’s about a total of five vulnerabilities that allow attackers to overwrite the smartphone’s memory and take control of the device.

Google notified Arm over the summer of vulnerabilities in its Mali GPUs. The chip maker did its homework and released a kernel driver update to the public almost immediately. Manufacturers can download and deploy them to their devices via a security update.

No patch has been released yet

However, Project Zero researchers have now concluded that after months of revealing the vulnerabilities, no manufacturer has fully addressed them. CVE-2022-36449the designation given to the vulnerability in the NIST database, is not mentioned anywhere in manufacturers’ security bulletins.

By announcing this, Project Zero hopes to revolutionize manufacturers. If we always ask users to apply security patches as quickly as possible, manufacturers themselves must lead by example. A clear blow from the pan at the address of smartphone manufacturers.

Do you want to know if your device is in danger? You can access it via Android Settings about the device View the technical specifications of your device, or consult the manufacturer’s website.