Qualcomm Android OS kernel privilege escalation and denial of service vulnerabilites

Overview

Android OS kernels running on certain Qualcomm devices contain multiple vulnerabilities which could allow an attacker to cause privilege escalation or Denial of Service (DoS).

Description

The Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. advisory states:

_Summary:
A locally installed application can cause privilege escalation or Denial of Service (DoS) by passing a specially crafted input to diagchar_ioctl call of Diagnostics (DIAG) kernel mode driver for Android. The involved CVE IDs are CVE-2012-4220 (untrusted pointer dereference), CVE-2012-4221 (integer overflow). A patch which can be applied to Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean source is made available from the location below.

A locally installed application can cause DoS by passing a specially crafted input to kgsl_ioctl call of Graphics KGSL kernel mode driver for Android. The involved CVE ID is CVE-2012-4222 (null pointer dereference). A patch which can be applied to Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean source is made available from the location below.

Affected version:
All Android releases from CAF prior to November 15, 2012 using Linux kernel from the following heads: msm-3.4, msm-3.0, jb_, ics_, gingerbread_*_

Note: Permission changes in ICS and Jelly Bean that restrict /dev/diag access to qcom_diag group mitigate CVE-2012-4220 and CVE-2012-4221.

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Impact

By convincing a user to install a specially crafted android application, a remote attacker may be able to cause a privilege escalation or Denial of Service (DoS) allowing them to gain control of the affected device.

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Solution

Update

The vendor states that these vulnerabilities have been addressed in PATCH_17010_jweEF843feG. Users are advised to apply the patch to affected devices. Fix for CVE-2012-4220 and CVE-2012-4221 in msm-3.4 can be found here. Fix for CVE-2012-4222 in msm-3.4 can be found here.

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Vendor Information

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QUALCOMM Incorporated Affected

Notified: November 01, 2012 Updated: November 30, 2012

Status

Affected

Vendor Statement

We have not received a statement from the vendor.

Vendor Information

We are not aware of further vendor information regarding this vulnerability.

Vendor References

• <https://www.codeaurora.org/participate/security-advisories/cve-2012-4220-cve-2012-4221-cve-2012-4222/&gt;
• <https://www.codeaurora.org/patches/quic/la/.PATCH_17010_jweEF843feG.tar.gz&gt;

CVSS Metrics

Group	Score	Vector
Base	6.6	AV:L/AC:M/Au:S/C:C/I:C/A:C
Temporal	5.2	E:POC/RL:OF/RC:C
Environmental	3.9	CDP:ND/TD:M/CR:ND/IR:ND/AR:ND

References

• <https://www.codeaurora.org/participate/security-advisories/cve-2012-4220-cve-2012-4221-cve-2012-4222/&gt;
• <https://www.codeaurora.org/patches/quic/la/.PATCH_17010_jweEF843feG.tar.gz&gt;

Acknowledgements

Thanks to [email protected] for reporting this vulnerability.

This document was written by Michael Orlando.

Other Information

CVE IDs:	CVE-2012-4220, CVE-2012-4221, CVE-2012-4222
Date Public:	2012-11-15 Date First Published: