Google is now fixing the newly announced vulnerabilities in its Android mobile operating system. The search engine giant has issued patches for 19 Android vulnerabilities, which include the Stagefright 2 flaw.
Recently, Google has released its monthly Nexus update that provides a patch for the Stagefright 2 issues. The Stagefright 2 affected the Stagefright media playback engine in Android and a billion handsets dating back to 2008 are thought to be at risk.
Joshua Drake, the Vice President of Platform Research and Exploitation at Zimperium, revealed the vulnerabilities last week after confidentially reporting them to Google. The two vulnerabilities were CVE-2015-3876 and CVE-2015-6602. He exposed the first set of Stagefright problems as well as unveiled those at the Black Hat and DEF CON conferences this summer. In addition, a third issue was also reported to Google by Daniel Micay, a security researcher at Copperhead Security.
The latest flaws are said to be lesser harmful than their predecessors. The Stagefright 2 vulnerabilities were located in the core Android library known as libtuils. On the other hand, the second dependent vulnerability was found in libstagefright that was introduced in Android 5.0 update.
Google also confirms that "The affected functionality is provided as an application API and there are multiple applications that allow it to be reached with remote content, most notably MMS and browser playback of media," in the libutils bugs.
Furthermore, these vulnerabilities allow a device to be compromised just by sending a specially crafted multimedia message. An attacker simply needs to know the victim's phone number to hack the device and affect how it functions.
Nevertheless, the patches are now in the Android Open Source Project. And the Google Nexus devices are beginning to receive updates as well.
On the whole, Google is not wasting any time patching these flaws. It will fix the software problems on the devices in order for the users to enjoy an ultimate Android experience.
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