Got an Android phone? Here's why you need to update it now

Google has released the monthly security updates for the Android operating system, which come with fixes for 46 vulnerabilities, along with the fix for three actively exploited bugs. Also Read: What Is Seedream 4.0? The Google Gemini AI Nano Banana Rival By TikTok Parent Company

“There are indications that the following (vulnerabilities) may be under limited, targeted exploitation — CVE-2023-26083, CVE-2021-29256, and CVE-2023-2136,” reads Android Security Bulletin. Also Read: Gmail Introduces New 'Purchases' Tab Ahead Of Amazon Great Indian Festival And Flipkart Big Billion Days Sale: What Is It?

According to Bleeping Computer, CVE-2023-26083 is a medium-severity memory leak flaw in the Arm Mali GPU driver for Bifrost, Avalon, and Valhall chips that was exploited in a December 2022 exploit chain that delivered spyware to Samsung devices. Also Read: How To Create Your 3D Figurine With Google Nano Banana AI Image Tool: Step-By-Step Guide With Prompt

CVE-2021-29256 is a critical (CVSS v3.1: 8.8) unprivileged information disclosure and root privilege escalation vulnerability that affects specific versions of the Bifrost and Midgard Arm Mali GPU kernel drivers.

The third vulnerability, CVE-2023-2136, is a critical-severity one with a score of 9.6 out of 10 as it is an integer overflow bug in Skia, Google’s open-source multi-platform 2D graphics library that is also used in Chrome, where it was fixed in April, the report said.

Moreover, the report mentioned that CVE-2023-21250, a critical vulnerability in Android’s System component that affects Android versions 11, 12, and 13, is the most serious of the security issues that Google fixed this month.

The Android security update for this month covers Android versions 11, 12, and 13, but depending on the scope of the addressed vulnerabilities, they may affect older OS versions that are no longer supported.

Last month, Google issued a security update for the Chrome web browser to address the third zero-day vulnerability exploited by hackers this year.

“Google is aware that an exploit for CVE-2023-3079 exists in the wild,” Google said in a blogpost.

— IANS