Old Apache Code At Root of Android FakeID Mess 127
chicksdaddy writes: A four-year-old vulnerability in an open source component that is a critical part of Android leaves hundreds of millions of mobile devices susceptible to silent malware infections. The vulnerability affects devices running Android versions 2.1 to 4.4 ("KitKat"), according to a statement released by Bluebox. The vulnerability was found in a package installer in affected versions of Android. The installer doesn't attempt to determine the authenticity of certificate chains that are used to vouch for new digital identity certificates. In short, Bluebox writes, "an identity can claim to be issued by another identity, and the Android cryptographic code will not verify the claim."
The security implications of this are vast. Malicious actors could create a malicious mobile application with a digital identity certificate that claims to be issued by Adobe Systems. Once installed, vulnerable versions of Android will treat the application as if it was actually signed by Adobe and give it access to local resources, like the special webview plugin privilege, that can be used to sidestep security controls and virtual 'sandbox' environments that keep malicious programs from accessing sensitive data and other applications running on the Android device. The flaw appears to have been introduced to Android through an open source component, Apache Harmony. Google turned to Harmony as an alternative means of supporting Java in the absence of a deal with Oracle to license Java directly.
Work on Harmony was discontinued in November, 2011. However, Google has continued using native Android libraries that are based on Harmony code. The vulnerability concerning certificate validation in the package installer module persisted even as the two codebases diverged.
The security implications of this are vast. Malicious actors could create a malicious mobile application with a digital identity certificate that claims to be issued by Adobe Systems. Once installed, vulnerable versions of Android will treat the application as if it was actually signed by Adobe and give it access to local resources, like the special webview plugin privilege, that can be used to sidestep security controls and virtual 'sandbox' environments that keep malicious programs from accessing sensitive data and other applications running on the Android device. The flaw appears to have been introduced to Android through an open source component, Apache Harmony. Google turned to Harmony as an alternative means of supporting Java in the absence of a deal with Oracle to license Java directly.
Work on Harmony was discontinued in November, 2011. However, Google has continued using native Android libraries that are based on Harmony code. The vulnerability concerning certificate validation in the package installer module persisted even as the two codebases diverged.
Thankfully those will be patched right in a jiffy! (Score:2, Insightful)
Phew, good thing Android is open source and these vulnerabilities will be patched right away be all those "for profit" companies, who wouldn't want their users to get angry!
Giggity [youtube.com]
Re:Thankfully those will be patched right in a jif (Score:5, Informative)
The patch already exists [phandroid.com], now it's up to our cell carriers to distribute it.
Re:Thankfully those will be patched right in a jif (Score:5, Informative)
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It's the Java runtime. It allows other programs written in Java to run. It is not Java itself.
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Re:Thankfully those will be patched right in a jif (Score:4, Insightful)
10% of the Google Play store wouldn't be malware.
It's not. That claim was typical hyperbole by an AV vendor desperately trying to find a market to sell their snake oil in now that Windows is in decline. The report they used even showed the Google Play Movies application as malware... They've since backed off the claim, but of course the mud (as intended) still sticks.
http://www.techrepublic.com/ar... [techrepublic.com]
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I only said 10%, not 70% or any of the other high numbers in the July 2014 trend micro report.
Re:Thankfully those will be patched right in a jif (Score:5, Informative)
I only said 10%,
Then where does the 10% claim come from?
Oh right - it was made up by AV vendors trying to scare peopple into buying their products.
Unless you’ve had your head under a rock you’ll have noticed the latter is fast becoming the weapon of choice for Google’s rivals in attempting to curtail the former. On paper it should. Android malware rose from 238 threats in 2012 to 804 new threats in 2013. What was the combined total of new threats for Apple iOS, BlackBerry OS and Microsoft Windows Phone in that time? Zero. The remaining 3% came from Nokia’s axed Symbian platform.
All of which poses a very valid question: how do you stay safe on Android? Perhaps surprisingly the answer is: easily. Why? Because here’s the part Google’s rivals don’t want you to know: the figures are misleading.
Let’s be clear. From a statistical viewpoint researcher and security specialist F-Secure got them right. Android does account for 97% of all mobile malware, but it comes from small, unregulated third party app stores predominantly in the Middle East and Asia. By contrast the percentage of apps carrying malware on Google’s official Play Store was found to be just 0.1%
http://www.forbes.com/sites/go... [forbes.com]
So that one's busted. Anything else you'd like to sell?
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Only 804 new threats a year? That shows remarkable constraint. I remember a few years ago they were claiming around 50,000 new viruses per day for Windows. Presumably they were counting every slight morphing of a given virus as a new, unique strain.
Re:Thankfully those will be patched right in a jif (Score:4, Informative)
I'm pretty certain Google has systems in place (as well as an after the fact kill function) to eradicate malicious apps that find their way onto the app store. Doubtless there are some there but they're background noise.
Re:Thankfully those will be patched right in a jif (Score:5, Informative)
At the end of the day, android gives users the freedom to choose where they get apps from. But freedom implies the freedom to do stupid things. It won't stop a user installing warez if they want, but if they get owned it's their own damned fault. Not much different from what happens on a PC or Mac really.
That said I don't think Android does enough to protect users from malicious or rogue apps, e.g. allowing the device to deny a permission to the app even if it claims to need it. Cyanogenmod demonstrates it can be added, but Google haven't seen fit to provide that functionality in the stock android code.
Re:Thankfully those will be patched right in a jif (Score:5, Funny)
The report they used even showed the Google Play Movies application as malware
To be fair, that app is capable of downloading Uwe Boll films so you can make a case for it being a bit malwareish.
Not so fast. (Score:1)
Yes, (Score:2)
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Couldn't this be patched as part of an update to the Google Services Framework?
It is and has been.
There is close to zero chance that anyone will be affected by this "Android mess". It's a beat up.
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Not as seamless and my wife's iPhone, but close enough for me
And not as long either, Google only provides updates for 18 months. If you buy a phone on a 2 year contract (as many people do) and you get the new Nexus the day it is released, you still have 6 months in which you will not receive (security) updates.
Completely unacceptable.
Play Services (Score:4, Informative)
If you have any of Google's apps installed, you'll also have Play Services installed - and this has already been updated to detect attempts to use the specific vulnerable certificates involved. If you only get your apps from the Play Store, you're fine, as they've already all been scanned (and no exploit attempts detected). Even if you sideload, so long as you left the Verify Apps checkbox on (default setting), then Play Services will scan any sideloaded apps too (no exploit attempts have been detected that way either).
While the vulnerability is a serious one, it's not something that will concern the vast majority of Google's Android users. It's probably a lot more significant for companies like Amazon, who will have to develop their own response, and (inevitably) for all those millions of Chinese users of generic non-Google Android derivatives.
passive scan isn't perfect (Score:2)
This doesn't fix the underlying vulnerability; it merely scans for known ways to exploit it. I'm sure some clever people will find a way to thwart these scans and exploit the vulnerability, unless it gets fixed.
The only way this sort of thing can be taken care of is if Google or some governments in countries with a large market share will mandate vendors of phones or their manufacturers to provide security updates for devices for at least the duration of the contract, but preferably for the expected life o
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Barring another bug, it can - and probably does - scan for *all* ways to exploit it. The issue is that Android itself doesn't properly verify the certificate chain in packages before installing them, and Play Services can easily perform all of the missing checks itself and reject any package that fails them.
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Find a popular ROM at XDA derived from whatever version you want to stick with and flash it (with a compatible kernel) to your phone.
Until you have a few months of reflashing experience, DO NOT attempt to flash any ROM that requires repartitioning the flash, and don't ask the recovery manager to wipe /system unless you really know what can happen & have a plan for dealing with it. This goes DOUBLE for anybody with a Samsung Galaxy S3.
Long story short: the eMMC is kind of like a SSD controller, and there
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Excellent advice! I'll just go tell my mom ....
Re:Thankfully those will be patched right in a jif (Score:5, Interesting)
Not just that.. its already reasonably moot.
http://www.osnews.com/story/27868/Another_day_another_sensationalist_unfounded_security_story
"First, a patch been sent to OEMs and AOSP, but with Android's abysmal update situation, this is a moot point. The crux, however, lies with Google Play and Verify Apps. These have already been updated to detect this issue, and prevent applications that try to abuse this flaw from being installed"
Google reacted to this disclosure rapidly and well.
Of course such a vulnerability would probably never be FOUND in iOS or WinPhone, since they are closed source, and almost certainly never disclosed if it was.
Just update your play store, and you are safe unless you are sideloading (never a great idea)
If you are sideloading then if you leave verify apps on, its also no problem.
Google are also scanning all apps on Google Play to check no one has been trying this.
Yawn, another google/Android beatup trying to wag the dog. Not hard to guess where the spin is originating.
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The last major security flaw in iOS was found in open source parts of iOS.
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.co... [sophos.com]
And all phones released since 2009 received the patch. (iPhone 3Gs and up)
No not all of Android is open source and Google is close sourcing more and more of what is considered "Android" by most people.
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cell carriers? I have a google nexus (one) and it was abandoned BY GOOGLE, not the carriers, 2 years ago. no security fixes, no nothing. stuck at 2.2.something.
google fucked us over by saying that nexus phones are upgradable and supported. they are not - not by any reasonable definition of 'supported'. I can have linux kernel, ip-stack (etc) updates (at least for security) for 10+ yr old linux pc's. but a few yr old phone - NO WAY. google has the attention span of a 5 yr old.
should I have to throw aw
Re: Thankfully those will be patched right in a ji (Score:1)
You weren't abondoned, the core apps still receive updates. The N1 is fine on GB so long as youre using play and updating apps.
If you want a full OS build then look for an aftermarket ROM like Cyanogenmod. I use my Desire Z (cousin of the n1) with Cyanogen 10 and it is fantastic. Do a bit of homework and leave your flaming for reddit.
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That's all good and fine but just realise that you are in fact the minority. 2 years is not an accepted life span for many devices, but for many phones it most definitely is. You can thank contracts that last that long and come with a "free" phone.
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I can thank contracts? this was bought outright and from google. it used to be their flagship (yes, a long time ago, but that's not relevant). what is relevant is how google ACTS vs what they SAY. their action speaks volumes and if it wasn't google, with 10's of thousands of employees who are, supposedly, best-in-the-world - they SHOULD have at least one person to support older phones, at least for security and major bugfixes. to this day (and on its birth day) it had a problem with x,y screen calibrat
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I can thank contracts? this was bought outright and from google.
Irrelevant. The market place in general works on 2 year contracts. Just because you do something different doesn't magically mean a company should support you for it.
In my experience they acted perfectly fine. Compare say your Nexus which received 2 years worth of updates, to *any other Android phone* which never received any updates from the manufacturer.
As for the calibration, I wonder why you didn't return the phone under warranty? You had a problem? Well 200000 other people didn't. There was no major pu
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Quite the opposite. Most "Geeks" I know bail out of their contract to get a new phone. The only person I know who doesn't have a phone on a plan is my mother. In every other case you get the latest phone for effectively free. That's how the brain works when you go from paying $40/month, contract expires, keep paying $40/month and a new phone arrives.
Maybe your non-geek friends are on different relationships with their telecom companies than my .... err whole country.
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The Nexus One was abandoned because Google said the hardware was too old. And they have a point - you have to jump through some major hoops to get a modern ROM onto it.
The N1 has 512 MB internal flash, and the way it was partitioned meant Android 4.0 was larger than the N1's system partition. Its partitioning scheme dates from the days when apps couldn't be moved to the SD card, so the system partition is only barely big enough to hold Android 2.3 to allow the maximum possible space for apps. Sure, you can
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bullshit excuse. I don't want or need new features. I want the 512 meg stuff TO WORK and not buzz at me when I touch the screen. or reboot (showing the shimmering X) during gps car use! or have their maps route me into a downtown (redwood city) when I'm really going from south san francisco to san jose. that is a pure route101 trip and yet, time after time, it sends me thru downtown RC when I didn't need to do that.
gmail app is broken (I have to use k9 to read my gmail) - gmail app won't even poll for
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If security fixes take up significant amount of additional space, then something's being done wrong. Very very wrong.
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Well no, the excuse will be that google don't want to backport fixes from their 4.2 branch back to their 2.2 branch. And I can't blame them, such backporting is usually alot of work and everybody hates doing it. Plus of course there would be no direct revenue from the engineering effort, other than a certain amount of 'goodwill' (which can apparently be put down on the balance sheet, but that seems a bit nuts to me).
So there's two problems, one - the new Apps/OS won't fix on your device and two - no-one wan
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> wish there was another choice. the whole mobile data thing really unnerves me with how bad the scene really is.
http://jolla.com/ [jolla.com] ?
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Well, there *is* an unofficial CM11 port [xda-developers.com]. It sounds like the limited memory and storage was a bit of a deal-breaker for everyone trying to support the Nexus One (even the alternate ROMs) until KitKat came along with its reduced resource needs. I suspect installing the Google Play Services stuff to get the app scanning might be asking a bit much.
But yeah, generally speaking I don't disagree with your premise. The Nexu
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READ THE MOTHERFUCKING SUMMARY! (Score:2, Informative)
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, I know this is Slashdot, but were you totally unable to read even the second sentence of the summary?
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sigh. merely replying to undo accidental moderation. meant to moderate insightful not redundant. slashdot really needs a manual undo of moderation.
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Java sandboxing helped in this case (Score:2)
Essentially, what Java sandboxing is designed to do is to completely separate different apps, so for example your text messaging app doesn't have access to your browser's password storage. On a regular OS, traditional applications have access to all of your files and all of your hardware, meaning one piece of malware can get everything on your computer. Sun hasn't done a great job of implementing the sandbox in their Windows Java plugin. Google may have done a better job on Android.
In Android, you specia
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Not quite.
First, sandboxing in Android isn't done at the Java level, it's done at the OS level, by running each app under a different UID and letting the kernel take care of enforcing what that UID is (and isn't) allowed to do. It's the same system that prevents different users on a "conventional" Linux system from accessing each other's private files. This is why Android apps can load and run native code (via JNI) without needing any special security permission or exemption. Native code is still in the
I call BS (Score:5, Funny)
Why are we blaming yet another coding mistake on Native Americans?
Native Americans are just as good as anyone at programming. I'd even say the Apache tribe has some top notch C++ people. Yes, the computers don't last long in the sweat lodges, but that's the price you pay for that "Made by real Americans" label.
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Too bad there is no "not funny" tag on slasdhot. This would be a perfect use case for it.
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There is. The long series of 1s following the comments under your profile for example ;-)
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There is no tribe called simply the "Apache". Though, the word Apache is used in the name of several of the tribes that make up the ethnic group. There are numerous tribes in the Apache ethnic group. One of largest of these tribes is the Navajo which doesn't use the word Apache in the tribal name.
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So you missed the fact that my statement was completely nonsensical and not based in reality? and yes, I mean more so than usual.
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An ethnography Nazi!
Didn't realize Slashdot had one of them.
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So does that make you a stupidity nazi who demands that no opportunity for the gaining of knowledge ever present itself?
I was trying to relate a bit of what I consider interesting information in response to a rather stupid joke. I expected the person I replied to have a fit about it being a joke. I didn't expect someone to get mad that I imparted information that most people aren't aware of.
Open Source Dangers (Score:1)
Kind of strange how all these reports of Open Source vulnerabilities are increasing recently. Despite the fact that, as in Heartbleed, hyped to the max, very few actual bad things seem to happen. Almost as if it were coordinated.
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I see it as good news that security software is getting more attention. There was a lot of bug backlog that's finally getting fixed. Each bug a bug is fixed we slowly and steadily eliminate attack vectors. Heartbleed is undoubtedly one of the drivers of this renewed attention, as are the revelations that nation states are actively working to exploit weaknesses. Patching bugs is one of the ways ordinary people can work against mass surveillance.
> Despite the fact that, as in Heartbleed, hyped to the max,
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One of the down sides of having fast, powerful and cheap computers today is that most users won't notice when they've been infected with a virus.
Appalling (Score:3)
I don't know the fine details of this bug, but am I the only one appalled at how obvious this bug sounds? It doesn't even properly check the certificate? I mean buffer overflows and such are one thing, but not properly testing your certificate code seems unforgivable.
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Re:Appalling (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know the fine details of this bug, but am I the only one appalled at how obvious this bug sounds? It doesn't even properly check the certificate? I mean buffer overflows and such are one thing, but not properly testing your certificate code seems unforgivable.
No, it's not that it doesn't check certificates generally, it's that if there's an additional, extra certificate of a particular form in the list that forms an app's certificate chain (but isn't actually in the chain) then that extra certificate gets included in the list of signatures associated with an app... making other apps that query the signature list believe that the app is signed by a certificate it's not. This doesn't, for example, fool the Play store into believing an app is from developer A when it's really from developer B. But it can fool other apps. There are some apps that load others as plugins, and make decisions about which plugins to load based on whether they're signed by a particular key. This flaw allows malicious apps to subvert that, convincing the plugin-loading apps to execute them, thereby giving the malicious app the same permissions as the plugin-loading app.
It's a serious security flaw, no doubt. But it's a little more subtle and less obvious than the summary makes it appear. Also, it appears that no app in the Play store, nor any of the other apps that Google has scanned, attempt to exploit the flaw. It's very easy to identify them by scanning the certificates in the package.
I've implemented tests for certificate chain validation code several times (not in Android), and it never once occurred to me to test for this particular odd construction, nor, I think, would anyone else think to test for it without some specific reason. This sort of bug requires inspection of the code.
(Disclaimer: I'm a member of the Android security team, but I'm not speaking in an official capacity, just summarizing what I've read of the vulnerability -- which isn't a great deal. Others on my team are well-informed, but I haven't followed this issue closely.)
No matter the flavor... (Score:2)
Relying on Java for anything fundamental is going to bite you in the butt.
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Crap. That's like 90% of cellphones out there (the rest are iPhones). Between Android and featurephones, all of which rely on Java... (J2ME wasn't just a pipedream - practically all featurephones prior to the iPhone used it).
It was inevitable (Score:1)
What did Apache expect when their code was written by Cowboys?
Malicious Actors? (Score:2)
Malicious actors could create a malicious mobile application with a digital identity certificate that claims to be issued by Adobe Systems.
It's a good thing most actors aren't good at programming.
Seriously, why do we feel we must constantly reel words, which were perfectly content in their familiar habitat, into the jargonic fold? "Actor"? Couldn't we have used one of dozens of words already used in everyday English: programmers, hackers, thieves, people? That last suggestion brings up another question: which of the two instances of the word "malicious" could safely be removed from the sentence? Both. After a long introduction about a security
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Really? The summary describes a software flaw with grave security implications, and you weigh in with some whining about the use of 'actor' and a mediocre quality sentence?
Education time: Some words have multiple meanings. Actor is one of them.
actor
noun: actor; plural noun: actors
1. a person whose profession is acting on the stage, in movies, or on television.
2. a participant in an action or process.
It's bog standard to use the second sense in this
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And a lot of android is open source. And it's used by many parties.
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Luckily, it's entirely because they have been "taking android back" that they've been able to issue a (closed-source) Play Services response to the threat so quickly, to all Google-using android phones regardless of carrier.
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And a lot of android is open source. And it's used by many parties.
As soon as you put open source code into your product, it's part of your product, and the quality is your responsibility. If you are a small time developer, you can use "Google used it as well, and they didn't find the problem" as an excuse. If you are Google, that excuse doesn't work.
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There were fewer eyes back then...
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There were fewer eyes back then...
So it was mpossble?