Google has resolved a high-severity safety problem affecting all Pixel smartphones that could possibly be trivially exploited to unlock the gadgets.
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-20465 and reported by safety researcher David Schütz in June 2022, was remediated as a part of the search big’s month-to-month Android replace for November 2022.
“The difficulty allowed an attacker with bodily entry to bypass the lock display protections (fingerprint, PIN, and so on.) and acquire full entry to the person’s system,” Schütz, who was awarded $70,000 for the lock display bypass, mentioned in a write-up of the flaw.
The issue, per the researcher, is rooted in the truth that lock display protections are fully defeated when following a selected sequence of steps –
- Provide incorrect fingerprint thrice to disable biometric authentication on the locked system
- Scorching swap the SIM card within the system with an attacker-controlled SIM that has a PIN code arrange
- Enter incorrect SIM pin thrice when prompted, locking the SIM card
- Machine prompts person to enter the SIM’s Private Unlocking Key (PUK) code, a novel 8-digit quantity to unblock the SIM card
- Enter a brand new PIN code for the attacker-controlled SIM
- Machine mechanically unlocks
This additionally implies that all an adversary must unlock a Pixel cellphone is to convey their very own PIN-locked SIM card and is in possession of the cardboard’s PUK code.
“The attacker may simply swap the SIM within the sufferer’s system, and carry out the exploit with a SIM card that had a PIN lock and for which the attacker knew the right PUK code,” Schütz mentioned.
An evaluation of the supply code commits made by Google to patch the flaw reveals that it is brought on by an “incorrect system state” launched because of wrongly deciphering the SIM change occasion, inflicting it to completely dismiss the lock display.
“I used to be not anticipating to trigger this huge of a code change in Android with this bug,” Schütz concluded.
