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Security Advisory - Information Leak Vulnerability in Huawei Smart Phones

  • SA No:huawei-sa-20160520-03-smartphone
  • Initial Release Date: May 20, 2016
  • Last Release Date: Jun 08, 2016

Some Huawei smartphones have an information leak vulnerability due to improper security status verification. An attacker may use a rogue base station to obtain information about subscribers' signal strengths. (Vulnerability ID: HWPSIRT-2015-12007)

This vulnerability has been assigned Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) ID: CVE-2016-5233

Huawei has released software updates to fix these vulnerabilities. This advisory is available at the following link:
http://www.huawei.com/en/psirt/security-advisories/huawei-sa-20160520-03-smartphone-en

Product Name

Affected Version

Resolved Product and Version

Mate 8

Version earlier than NXT-AL10C00B182

NXT-AL10C00B182

Version earlier than NXT-CL00C92B182

NXT-CL00C92B182

Version earlier than NXT-DL00C17B182

NXT-DL00C17B182

Version earlier than NXT-TL00C01B182

NXT-TL00C01B182

By exploiting this vulnerability, an attacker can use a rogue base station to obtain information about subscribers' signal strengths.

The vulnerability classification has been performed by using the CVSSv2 scoring system (http://www.first.org/cvss/).

Base Score: 2.6 (AV:N/AC:H/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N)

Temporal Score: 2.0 (E:F/RL:OF/RC:C)

1. Prerequisite:

The subscribers assess into the rogue base station.

2. Attacking procedure:

The attacker sends specific signals to the subscribers. Since the mobile phones do not implement proper security status verification, the attacker can exploit the vulnerability to obtain information about the subscribers' signal strengths.

1. The product that supports automatic update will receive a system update prompt. You can install the update to fix the vulnerability.

2. 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/index.htm


This vulnerability was disclosed by Ravishankar Borgaonkar and Altaf Shaik.

2016-06-08 V1.1 UPDATED added CVE-ID

2016-05-20 V1.0 INITIAL

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.

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