Executive brief
A vulnerability in the Telecom application on Samsung Note devices can allow an attacker to crash the phone or potentially gain elevated system permissions. This affects devices running Android 5.0, 5.1, and 6.0. An exploit could lead to a full device reboot, causing a denial of service, or allow a malicious app to access data it should not have permission to see.
Technical details
A vulnerability exists in the SmartCall Activity component of the Samsung Telecom application due to improper exception handling when processing serializable objects. By passing a malformed serializable object to the component, an attacker can trigger a crash leading to a device reboot (Denial of Service) or potentially achieve privilege escalation. The attack requires local access or the ability to send intents to the affected component, often involving user interaction with a malicious application. Samsung addressed this in the August 2016 Security Maintenance Release by improving the exception handling routines within the affected component.
Affected products
- Samsung Android (Samsung Note) 5.0, 5.1, 6.0 (Lollipop, Marshmallow)
Timeline
- 2016-05-11: disclosed: Privately reported to Samsung
- 2016-08-01: patched: Addressed in Samsung August 2016 Security Maintenance Release
- 2017-01-18: advisory: NVD publication date