Google has just released a security update that brings important vulnerability fixes. The update includes the most important fix for the “Dirty Cow” security flaw that was emerged recently.
The latest security patch has patched a total of 50 security flaws, 11 of which are being critical. Google says that some of these critical vulnerabilities can remotely enable arbitrary code execution in the kernel, which could further lead to permanent security issues in the device.
Alongside various other fixes, Google has patched the infamous “Dirty Cow” (CVE-2016-5195) vulnerability that has been present in the Linux kernel for more than a decade. The race condition bug exposes write-access to read-only memory. Raspberry Pi Foundation patched the critical bug in October. However, Android users had to wait to receive the fix.
The latest update has also patched the kernel memory flaw (CVE-2016-4794). The vulnerability lets the attacker gain root access of the device. Furthermore, the update brings fix for privilege escalation flaws, and drivers for ION, HTC sound codec and MediaTek I2C.
The latest Android security update is being rolled out to all compatible Android devices. That said, the Pixel and Nexus models are likely to receive the update ahead of other handsets.
