Bad Binder: Android In-The-Wild Exploit (Project Zero)

Posted Nov 23, 2019 11:01 UTC (Sat) by roc (subscriber, #30627)
In reply to: Bad Binder: Android In-The-Wild Exploit (Project Zero) by clugstj
Parent article: Bad Binder: Android In-The-Wild Exploit (Project Zero)

If a bug fix needs to be backported to released products as a matter of urgency, but no-one notices that, I think we should consider that a mistake.

This doesn't mean one needs to delay making a fix available until "all possible implications are understood".

Bad Binder: Android In-The-Wild Exploit (Project Zero)

Posted Nov 23, 2019 18:46 UTC (Sat) by tuna (guest, #44480) [Link] (4 responses)

Maybe it would be better for the makers of those devices to make sure you can use the latest versions of Linux instead of depending on backports.

Bad Binder: Android In-The-Wild Exploit (Project Zero)

Posted Nov 24, 2019 3:09 UTC (Sun) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (1 responses)

Upstream Linux kernel releases don't happen frequently enough for "update to the latest released upstream kernel" to be a viable security strategy. So at least you have to backport to the stable branches maintained by Greg K-H etc.

Bad Binder: Android In-The-Wild Exploit (Project Zero)

Posted Nov 24, 2019 8:28 UTC (Sun) by tuna (guest, #44480) [Link]

If you consider stable Linux version (5.4.x) that are released between the major versions released by Thorvalds, you should be getting all known stable bug fixes (including sequrity fixes). That might be to many updates for Android devices though....

Bad Binder: Android In-The-Wild Exploit (Project Zero)

Posted Nov 25, 2019 19:04 UTC (Mon) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (1 responses)

Google <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/google-outlines-p...">recently proposed running Android on mainline kernels</a>. But they want a stable kernel ABI because Android (as realistically deployed on hardware that the typical consumer actually uses) is basically guaranteed to have a lot of binary blobs.

Bad Binder: Android In-The-Wild Exploit (Project Zero)

Posted Nov 25, 2019 22:55 UTC (Mon) by mfuzzey (subscriber, #57966) [Link]

Not sure it has many *kernel* binary blobs.
Userspace binary blobs yes sure but a stable kernel API would be irrelevant.

Lots of out of tree kernel drivers too unfortunately but most do have source available even if the quality, as is typical with vendor non mainlined code is poor.