Google issues ‘severe’ warning for all Android owners – act fast to avoid ‘dozens’ of dangerous attacks

ANDROID users have been warned to update their software or risk getting their devices plagued by newly discovered vulnerabilities.

Earlier this week, Google released its monthly Android Security Bulletin for May.

1

Google’s security bulletin expands on new security patches it has issued for Android devices.

“The Android Security Bulletin contains details of security vulnerabilities affecting Android devices,” the bulletin reads.

“Security patch levels of 2023-05-05 or later address all of these issues,” Android added.

The tech giant then described a few critically rated vulnerabilities that affect Android’s system.

The vulnerabilities are lurking in the framework, system, kernel, Arm, Imagination Technologies, MediaTek, Unisoc, and Qualcomm components, Security Week noted.

Most of the vulnerabilities are rated high severity and can be used to access users’ devices or even take them over.

“The most severe of these issues is a high-security vulnerability in the Framework component that could lead to local escalation of privilege with no additional execution privileges needed,” Google explained.

Local privilege escalation happens when one user acquires the system rights of another user’s device. 

This vulnerability, which was exploited as a zero-day, is tracked as CVE-2023-0266 and it was first uncovered by Google in late March.

“It was part of an exploit chain involving several vulnerabilities, including ones impacting Chrome and the Mali GPU kernel driver,” Security Week noted.

Bad actors reportedly delivered the exploits via SMS links sent to the targeted individuals.

“The hackers actually targeted the Samsung Internet Browser, which is based on Chromium but lacks some of the important mitigations present in Chrome,” Security Week added.

To stay protected against such vulnerabilities, you need to update your Android software immediately.

UPDATE YOUR DEVICE

Android users first need to head to Settings and then select System.

From there, locate System Updates, and then if you see any software, select Download and Install.

If you do not see any updates, you may need to wait for an official update to roll out.

You can find more information on updating your Android device here.

This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk