Today Google released a security update AndroidIt reportedly fixes 46 vulnerabilities. It also includes a zero-day vulnerability.

For those who don’t know, a zero-day vulnerability is a security flaw in software, hardware, or firmware that is exploited by attackers before the vendor can detect and fix it. The term “zero-day” refers to the time the vendor has to issue a patch, meaning the vulnerability has already been discovered or exploited.

Google releases two batches of patches in August security update to fix vulnerabilities

This particular zero-day vulnerability (post-release exploitation vulnerability), dubbed CVE-2024-36971, is reportedly present in the Linux kernel used by Microsoft. Android to manage network routing. While exploiting this vulnerability requires system-level execution privileges, Google noted in its security bulletin that there are indications that this zero-day vulnerability could be susceptible to limited, targeted attacks.

An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability would need to be able to execute arbitrary code on unpatched devices without any user input. The zero-day vulnerability was discovered by Clement Lessin, a security researcher at Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG). Google It is not disclosing specific details of the vulnerability in order to give Android phone users enough time to update and patch their devices.

As mentioned earlier, there were 45 other vulnerabilities. To address all the vulnerabilities, Google released two batches of patches in the August security update, marked 2024-08-01 and 2024-08-05. Specifically, the second batch of patches includes all the fixes from the first batch, as well as fixes for third-party closed-source and core components.

Therefore, users are advised to install patches as soon as they become available. Despite the devices Google Pixel Get updates quickly, as other manufacturers may take a while to release updates for certain models.