Qualcomm Chip Flaws Let Hackers Steal Private Data From Android Devices

Nov 14, 2019

Hundreds of millions of devices, especially Android
smartphones and tablets, using Qualcomm chipsets, are vulnerable to
a new set of potentially serious vulnerabilities.

According to a report ^[1] cybersecurity firm
CheckPoint shared with The Hacker News, the flaws could allow
attackers to steal sensitive data stored in a secure area that is
otherwise supposed to be the most protected part of a mobile
device.

The vulnerabilities reside in Qualcomm’s Secure Execution
Environment (QSEE), an implementation of Trusted Execution
Environment (TEE) based on ARM TrustZone technology.

Also known as Qualcomm’s Secure World, QSEE is a
hardware-isolated secure area on the main processor that aims to
protect sensitive information and provides a separate secure
environment (REE) for executing Trusted Applications.

Along with other personal information, QSEE usually contains
private encryption keys, passwords, credit, and debit card
credentials.

Since it is based on the principle of least privilege, Normal World
system modules like drivers and applications can not access
protected areas unless necessary—even when they have root
permissions.

“In a 4-month research project, we succeeded in reverse Qualcomm’s
Secure World operating system and leveraged the fuzzing technique
to expose the hole,” researchers told The Hacker News.

“We implemented a custom-made fuzzing tool, which tested trusted
code on Samsung, LG, Motorola devices,” which allowed researchers
to find four vulnerabilities in trusted code implemented by
Samsung, one in Motorola and one in LG.

dxhdcp2 (LVE-SMP-190005)
sec_store (SVE-2019-13952)
authnr (SVE-2019-13949)
esecomm (SVE-2019-13950)
kmota (CVE-2019-10574)
tzpr25 (acknowledged by Samsung)
prov (Motorola is working on a fix)

According to researchers, the reported vulnerabilities in the
secure components of Qualcomm could allow an attacker to:

execute trusted apps in the Normal World (Android OS),
load patched trusted app into the Secure World (QSEE),
bypassing Qualcomm’s Chain Of Trust,
adapt the trusted app for running on a device of another
manufacturer,
and more.

“An interesting fact is that we can load trustlets from another
device as well. All we need to do is replace the hash table,
signature, and certificate chain in the .mdt file of the trustlet
with those extracted from a device manufacturer’s trustlet,”
researchers said.

In short, a vulnerability in TEE component leaves devices
vulnerable to a wide range of security threats, including the
leakage of protected data, device rooting, bootloader unlocking,
and execution of undetectable APT.

The vulnerabilities also affect a wide range of smartphone and
IoT devices that use the QSEE component to secure users’ sensitive
information.

Check Point Research responsibly disclosed its findings to all
affected vendors, out of which Samsung, Qualcomm, and LG have
already released a patch update for these QSEE
vulnerabilities.

References

^{^}
report
(research.checkpoint.com)

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OWASP TOP !0

Injection. Injection flaws, such as SQL, NoSQL, OS, and LDAP injection, occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as part of a command or query. The attacker’s hostile data can trick the interpreter into executing unintended commands or accessing data without proper authorization. Broken Authentication. Application functions related to authentication and session management are often implemented incorrectly, allowing attackers to compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens, or to exploit other implementation flaws to assume other users’ identities temporarily or permanently. Sensitive Data Exposure. Many web applications and APIs do not properly protect sensitive data, such as financial, healthcare, and PII. Attackers may steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. Sensitive data may be compromised without extra protection, such as encryption at rest or in transit, and requires special precautions when exchanged with the browser. XML External Entities (XXE). Many older or poorly configured XML processors evaluate external entity references within XML documents. External entities can be used to disclose internal files using the file URI handler, internal file shares, internal port scanning, remote code execution, and denial of service attacks. Broken Access Control. Restrictions on what authenticated users are allowed to do are often not properly enforced. Attackers can exploit these flaws to access unauthorized functionality and/or data, such as access other users’ accounts, view sensitive files, modify other users’ data, change access rights, etc. Security Misconfiguration. Security misconfiguration is the most commonly seen issue. This is commonly a result of insecure default configurations, incomplete or ad hoc configurations, open cloud storage, misconfigured HTTP headers, and verbose error messages containing sensitive information. Not only must all operating systems, frameworks, libraries, and applications be securely configured, but they must be patched/upgraded in a timely fashion. Cross-Site Scripting XSS. XSS flaws occur whenever an application includes untrusted data in a new web page without proper validation or escaping, or updates an existing web page with user-supplied data using a browser API that can create HTML or JavaScript. XSS allows attackers to execute scripts in the victim’s browser which can hijack user sessions, deface web sites, or redirect the user to malicious sites. Insecure Deserialization. Insecure deserialization often leads to remote code execution. Even if deserialization flaws do not result in remote code execution, they can be used to perform attacks, including replay attacks, injection attacks, and privilege escalation attacks. Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities. Components, such as libraries, frameworks, and other software modules, run with the same privileges as the application. If a vulnerable component is exploited, such an attack can facilitate serious data loss or server takeover. Applications and APIs using components with known vulnerabilities may undermine application defenses and enable various attacks and impacts. Insufficient Logging & Monitoring. Insufficient logging and monitoring, coupled with missing or ineffective integration with incident response, allows attackers to further attack systems, maintain persistence, pivot to more systems, and tamper, extract, or destroy data. Most breach studies show time to detect a breach is over 200 days, typically detected by external parties rather than internal processes or monitoring.

Qualcomm Chip Flaws Let Hackers Steal Private Data From Android Devices

References

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