The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned today of a high-severity Android vulnerability believed to have been exploited by a Chinese e-commerce app Pinduoduo as a zero-day to spy on its users.
This Android Framework security flaw (tracked as
CVE-2023-20963) allows attackers to escalate privileges on unpatched Android devices without requiring user interaction.
"Android Framework contains an unspecified vulnerability that allows for privilege escalation after updating an app to a higher Target SDK with no additional execution privileges needed," CISA
explains.
Google addressed the bug in security updates released in early March,
saying that "there are indications that CVE-2023-20963 may be under limited, targeted exploitation."
On March 21, Google
suspended the official shopping app of Chinese online retailer giant Pinduoduo (which claims to have
over 750 million monthly active users) from the Play Store after discovering malware in off-Play versions of the app, tagging it as a harmful app and warning users that it could allow "unauthorized access" to their data or device.