Indian government issues 'high risk' warning for Android users

Android is the most used mobile operating system across the globe with millions of users across the globe. Every year, Google rolls out a new and updated version of the operating system with tons of exciting features and design changes. As most of the work these days is possible through smartphones, we often store and share a lot of our personal information including location, banking details and other via our phone. To keep the information of users on older and newer Android versions safe, Google regularly rolls out updates and security patches. Although the tech giant releases these updates from time to time, many users don’t update the OS often due to lack of data, storage or ease of use. Such devices with older versions of the OS are easy to exploit due to the exposed vulnerabilities. A few such vulnerabilities have been spotted in Android OS and the Indian government has issued a warning for users of Android OS versions 11, 12, 12L, 13.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has revealed that which could be exploited by an attacker to execute arbitrary code, gain elevated privileges, gain access to sensitive information and cause denial of service (DoS) conditions on the targeted system.

According to CERT-In, these vulnerabilities exist in Android OS due to flaws in Framework, System, Google Play system updates, Kernel, MediaTek components, Uniso components, Qualcomm components and Qualcomm closed-source components.

Successful exploitation of these vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code, gain elevated privileges, gain access to sensitive information and cause denial of service conditions on the targeted system. To avoid any swindling, users should apply appropriate patches as mentioned by Google.