Corporate Worldwide
Corporate
Corporate news and information
Consumer
Phones, laptops, tablets, wearables & other devices
Enterprise
Enterprise products, solutions & services
Carrier
Products, solutions & services for carrier networks
Huawei Cloud
Cloud products, solutions & services

Select a Country or Region

This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Read our privacy policy

Security Advisory - PXN Defense Mechanism Failure Vulnerability in Huawei Mobile Phones

  • SA No:huawei-sa-20161026-01-pxn
  • Initial Release Date:2016-10-26
  • Last Release Date:2016-11-23

There is a Privileged Execute-Never (PXN) defense mechanism failure vulnerability in the drive code of some Huawei mobile phones. An attacker may trick users into installing malicious apps which can disable the PXN defense mechanism by invoking related drive code to crash the system or escalate privilege. (Vulnerability ID: HWPSIRT-2016-07005)
This vulnerability has been assigned CVE ID: CVE-2016-8768.
Huawei has released software updates to fix this vulnerability. This advisory is available at the following link: 
http://www.huawei.com/en/psirt/security-advisories/huawei-sa-20161026-01-pxn-en

Product Name

Affected Version

Resolved Product and Version

Honor 6/ Honor 6 Plus/ Honor 7

Versions earlier than 6.9.16

6.9.16[1]

[1] The product user who submits the upgrade application in huawei club website (https://www.wenjuan.com/s/YBNzIj/) will receive a system update prompt, install the update can fix the vulnerability.

Successful exploitation of the vulnerabilities allows attackers to crash the system or escalate user privilege.
The vulnerability classification has been performed by using the CVSSv2 scoring system (http://www.first.org/cvss/).

Base Score: 6.2 (AV:L/AC:H/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C) 
Temporal Score: 5.1 (E:F/RL:O/RC:C)
1. Prerequisite:
The attacker successfully tricks a user into installing a malicious application on the smart phone.
2. Attacking procedure:
An attacker may trick users into installing malicious apps which can disable the PXN defense mechanism by invoking related drive code to crash the system or escalate privilege.
None


Customers should contact Huawei TAC (Huawei Technical Assistance Center) to request the upgrades. For TAC contact information, please refer to Huawei worldwide website at http://www.huawei.com/en/psirt/report-vulnerabilities.

This vulnerability was first reported to Huawei PSIRT by Zhao Jianqiang and Chen Gengjia from 360 IceSword Lab, WangQize in ADLab of Venustech and Zhu Bin from VPP Security Team and Pan Yu from 360 Vulpecker Team also reported the problem to Huawei PSIRT later. Huawei would like to thank Zhao Jianqiang, Chen Gengjia, Wang Qize, Zhu Bin and Pan Yu for working with us and coordinated vulnerability disclosure to protect our customers.

2016-11-23 V1.1 UPDATE Updated the Summary and CVSS Score
2016-10-26 V1.0 INITIAL

None

Huawei adheres to protecting the ultimate interests of users with best efforts and the principle of responsible disclosure and deal with product security issues through our response mechanism.

To enjoy Huawei PSIRT services and obtain Huawei product vulnerability information, please visit http://www.huawei.com/en/psirt.

To report a security vulnerability in Huawei products and solutions, please send it to PSIRT@huawei.com. For details, please visit http://www.huawei.com/en/psirt/report-vulnerabilities.

This document is provided on an "AS IS" basis and does not imply any kind of guarantee or warranty, either express or implied, including the warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. In no event shall Huawei or any of its directly or indirectly controlled subsidiaries or its suppliers be liable for any damages whatsoever including direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, loss of business profits or special damages. Your use of the document, by whatsoever means, will be totally at your own risk. Huawei is entitled to amend or update this document from time to time.