Trend publishes analysis of yet another Android media handling bug More details have emerged about yet another Android vulnerability, that, like other recent flaws, revolves around how the Google-backed mobile operating system handles media files. The Android Mediaserver vulnerability might be exploited to perform attacks involving arbitrary code execution, security researchers at Trend Micro …
You ain't kidding, I'm just going to leave my jaw on the floor next time. I've developed for and supported this OS, recommended it to friends and family, it's becoming embarrassing.
Being an open source supporter (aka freetard), Google had already started losing me with the Googlification of stock apps (camera, gallery, contacts, phone, messaging, email etc. are all now proprietary Google apps). They need to refocus their attention on the core OS and stop all this "we own the apps therefore we own Android" messing about.
I'm starting to think we need another competitor in the industry (other than iOS - too controlling/inflexible for my liking).
What, you mean with a patch for the bug released within two months of submission? Don't remember any of those for Windows 98. Don't remember any kind of OS level isolation between apps either.
The problem isn't really with AOSP but with the way this is adapted (or fucked around with) by manufacturers and carriers before they put it in on phones which makes integrating upstream patches unnecessarily difficult and putting devices at risk.
The increased scrutiny that Android is receiving should be welcomed, and is indicative of its importance as the most used operating system in the world. That said few of the bugs can be exploited remotely and so are largely dependent upon side-loading or nefarious agencies (criminals and secret services) getting them into official stores and onto devices.
There is one crucial difference between Windows 98 and today's mobile phones. You could harden your Windows 98. I know from today's perspective that sounds silly, but you could actually remove functionality you didn't want.
That's much harder on mobile devices as you usually boot a signed image. Only your hardware vendor can sign that image.
Also there is no pressure to get things fixed. For Windows there was the pressure of alternative operating systems. Before Microsoft got its act together and simply fixed every bug they could find, there was a strong movement to go to Linux just because Microsoft didn't seem to care about fixing security critical bugs.
There is no way to install an alternative OS on most mobile devices, you are usually stuck with what the manufacturer chose for you.
just mean it's that much easier to "root" your phone ? I have never bothered to root my Android devices, (long time ago) on webOS "root" was typing in a special pass code to unlock developer mode and you could get a root shell by plugging into the usb port.
though I have seen useful utilities on the google play store which require root access. Just been too lazy to try it myself so far.
Offhand, it looks like the Stagefright bug could be used to root the phone on devices where it runs with system privileges. Apparently (according to the Zimperium blog post), on some devices it only runs with media privileges - but privilege escalation is always a possibility.
So, yes, this is probably another vector for rooting Android phones.
There are some useful things you can do with a rooted phone. Titanium Backup can hide vendor-installed crapware on a rooted phone, for example. You can replace the stock Android with CyanogenMod. You can disable Stagefright, if you don't care about playing media files or have an alternative decoding library. And sometimes it's just fun to fire up a console session and go poking around in the system.
I rooted my first Android phone but never got around to doing anything interesting with it before it died. My current one came rooted - bought it from a reseller via Amazon as an unlocked, no-SIM phone, and as it turned out it was rooted as well. Handy.
Quite cleaerly not. The details of stagefright are now out in the open, and a quick skim of xda where there are "root bounties" of several thousands of dollars if you can roor certain phones and tablets, well the bounties are still unclaimed..
Stagefright is still a very theoretical exploit, on jellybean and later ASLR means its mostly mitigated anyway. But I guess nobody cares about the details or they are too thick to understand them, so just latch onto the headlines.
The iOS reboot bug via text message on the other hand was a surefire thing, you send the message, it happened. We had great fun in our office with that one. Stagefright, well that's difficult to exploit on old phones, and hard and pointless to exploit on newer JB onwards phones.
Getting patches applied to vulnerable systems may however take some time due to the fragmented nature of the Android ecosystem as well as the lack of an efficient patch delivery mechanism, at least outside of Google's home-grown Nexus devices.
Exactly why I got a Nexus. I liked the old phone, but my carrier was never going to update it. So now I get security updates a bit slowly, but it's a vast improvement on never, right?
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