Androids October 2020 Security Update Patches 48 Vulnerabilities

07 October 2020

Androids October 2020 Security Update Patches 48 Vulnerabilities

The October 2020 security updates for Android patch a total of 48 vulnerabilities, including critical-severity flaws that affect Qualcomm closed-source components.

Twenty of the vulnerabilities described in the latest Android Security Bulletin were patched as part of the 2020-10-01 security patch level, the most important of which is a high-risk bug in System that could allow a remote attacker to gain additional permissions.

A total of ten issues were fixed in Android System this month, all rated high severity. Two of these are elevation of privilege bugs, while the remaining eight are information disclosure vulnerabilities.

Other impacted components include Android runtime (a high-risk elevation of privilege bug that could allow attackers to run arbitrary code), Framework (two elevation of privilege bugs and three information disclosure issues, all high severity), and Media Framework (three high-risk information disclosure and one medium-severity elevation of privilege).

The second part of this month’s update arrives on devices as the 2020-10-05 security patch level and addresses 28 bugs in Kernel (one flaw), MediaTek components (five issues), Qualcomm components (four vulnerabilities), and Qualcomm closed-source components (18 flaws).

While 22 of these bugs have a severity rating of high, six of the vulnerabilities in Qualcomm closed-source components were rated critical.

Devices that run a patch level of October 5 include fixes for all of the vulnerabilities mentioned above, as well as those addressed in previous monthly updates.

Pixel devices are automatically updated to the 2020-10-05 security patch level. No security patches specific to Pixel devices were released this month.

Last month, Google started rolling out Android 11, which arrived with various new security improvements, including many designed specifically for the work profile that has been present on the operating system since 2014.